Reindeer Games
by L. Burke
Summary: Even among your own family you can feel completely alone at times especially when you’re missing a loved one.
1. Chapter 1

I blame "Millie" for this. She planted this terrible train wreck of a thought of us "getting to know each other better" in to my father's head. I will not in good conscience support any plan that encourages my family to 'Get in touch with their feelings". Without a doubt, another sign of the coming apocalypse (besides reality TV) is the Eppes family digging for emotions past "hungry" and/or "tired".

It started with an uncomfortable, awkward, please-kill-me family dinner. Any mandatory family misery that revolves around your father introducing you to his new girlfriend, (who also happens to be your brother's boss) statistically speaking is going to end badly.

I know. I'm FBI. I've read the numbers. I've seen the kill sprees.

It is family dinners like this that reinforce 'I hate my parents' and the 'I'm never having children' you nurse in the back of your mind at two in the morning and only voice to a therapist after a round or two in rehab, numerous breakdowns, and maybe a session or two of high voltage shock therapy.

The evening was going to be bad from the moment I walked in to the warm family atmosphere the equivalent of Antarctica, my father exclaiming "Donnie, I'm so glad you're here" as soon as I arrived. My father and brother were facing off, glaring at each other like two Alpha wolves set to do battle.

I'm talking rubber-necking gawking at the mangled, dismembered bodies lying on the side of the road type of bad.

Before I even had the chance to sit down, Charlie declared, "Dad invited Mildred for dinner tonight."

Crap.

"Maybe I should have mentioned it sooner? That way youngest son would again conveniently find something else to do tonight?" my father shot back. Turning to me using a tone that was more a dare, "Besides you don't mind if I invited Millie for dinner right, Donnie? She wants to meet you."

So this is Hell. I always thought it would be warmer.

"Not exactly dressed for company, Dad."

In fact, I had seen celebrity mug shots better prepared to receive the public than I was at the moment. I smelled like something that had just spent three days lying in the gutter. Looked like the cover-boy for 'Crack Whore' magazine. I hadn't shaved in twenty-four hours. My deodorant had surrendered and died six hours ago. I didn't want to even think about the dark splotches covering my shoes. The shoes where getting burned as soon as I could get them off.

"Do I have time to grab a shower?"

The door bell rang and Charlie stated oh-so sweetly, "And that would Mildred. Punctual as usual."

Mom where ever you are looking down on us. Go ahead. Laugh it up.

My father went to answer the door. I turned to Charlie and hopefully asked, "Is Amita coming tonight?"

I think the temperature in the room dropped another couple of degrees with Charlie's chipped answer of, "No".

My father reappeared with a heavy set woman, and announced, "Millie, I'd like you to meet my oldest son, Donnie".

Plastering a phony smile on my face I replied "It's nice to meet you Millie. I've heard so much about you." Funny? Despite every thing Charlie and Larry had told me about her, I couldn't see the cloven feet and horns.

She smiled back at me and responded, "I've seen so much of your cases floating around my various departments, Agent Eppes. It is nice to finally meet you."

Charlie's right. The hair-style hides the horns.

"You must be very proud of what your people have accomplished then," I stated matter-of-fact. I knew her type. You could not work for the government and deal with bureaucrats for over ten years and not know her type. "The partnership between Cal Sci and FBI has proved to be very successful and saved numerous lives. The FBI is even considering using this model at smaller branch offices across the country." I smiled again, "Giving Cal Sci full credit for creating the pilot program and any interest it might generate in the corporate sector, of course."

The smile met her eyes this time, "Don, I think you and I am going to get along fabulously."

Ignoring the look Charlie shot me. A look that probably mirrored the one that Romulus shot Remus right before he brutally murdered his brother. I muttered "I'm going to grab a shower now," and bolted for the stairs.

Ever have one of those evening where you're completely surrounded by your loved ones but feel completely alone?

I missed Mom so much it hurt that night at the dinner table. By the time I came down stairs, Charlie was already in "Mathematician" mode. My Dad was speaking "Engineer", and Millie was speaking a strange hybrid of both. Charlie and Millie were disagreeing about something I didn't understand and had no hope of following. My Dad sitting between them playing peacekeeper.

I never realized until that moment exactly how it had been Mom who had pulled me in to the dinner conversations or how much I missed debating with her about things like search and seizure, police power, and the role of law enforcement. Charlie and Dad always had the math and science. Mom and I had the law.

My dad must have read something on my face and suddenly changed the topic and asked "So Donnie , how was your day?"

I watched a ten year-old convulse for 10 minutes when the balloon full of drugs her junkie mother made her swallow burst inside of her. While I waited for an ambulance to fight their way through LA traffic, I fought to keep her alive by giving her CPR. Oh and did I mention? Her brains leaked all over my shoes because the convulsions were so powerful they turned her brains to mush. You?

Suddenly I wasn't hungry any more. Not looking up from my plate or meeting my father's eyes I muttered, "Fine".

God, I miss you, mom.

No one even noticed when I got up and left the table ten minutes later.


	2. Chapter 2

"Did you know? Eagles kill their weaker nest-mates. When the smaller fledglings compete for food or simply annoy them, the larger nestlings just push 'um out of the nest on to the jagged rocks below," I declared without opening my eyes or shifting positions on the sofa.

I recognized the sound of those footfalls anywhere. Charlie had a rather distinct sound to his walk. I always thought the distinctness of his walk came from his head always leading his body around, like when nature crafted him, he was given a body simply as a means to move that astounding brain about.

"Now you can't deny you enjoyed that documentary."

"Did not, "I grumbled out loud, refuting this outrageous accusation, "I was sick with the flu, catatonic with boredom, and stoned out of my mind on the green, death-flavored Niquil Dad had laced my food with."

"You pumped your fist in the air and shouted "Yes" at the end when the fledging eagle soared away."

It was regrettably true. "It had killed its smaller, weaker, sibling and was escaping its parent's nurturing clutches. I was living all my dreams vicariously."

"How do you always know it's me?"

"Too many years working fugitive recovery and that older brother sixth sense."

More sound of shuffling feet, closer this time, "You never talk about your time in Fugitive Recovery."

I opened my eyes, meeting a concerned pair of brown ones looking down at me, and stated in a tone that left little room for argument, "You're right. I don't."

I was not digging up old nightmares tonight. These days I had enough new ones.

"If you ever need to..."

Wiping a hand over my eyes in an attempt to chase the cobwebs away, I asked, "What time is it?"

"About eleven thirty," Charlie replied. "You bailed out on dinner and crashed on the couch."

Noticing the box Charlie was holding, I sat up and asked, "What's in the box?"

"A peace offering," Charlie replied sheepishly. "I owe you an apology for trying to pull you in to the middle of it with Dad and me when you walked in tonight. It was out of line and I'm sorry."

"Ah... I get it. Trying to buy my favor." I gave him a fake, snotty, look as I gave the box a quick glance, "My forgiveness does NOT come cheap, Geekboy."

"It's a cheesecake from Armando's."

Rich.

Creamy.

One slice causes irreparable Coronary Artery Disease.

SOOO worth it.

"Give me," I proclaimed happily as I scooted over to make room for him on the couch. "I can be bought."

Charlie, chuckling with remark, flicked his wrist and slid the cake box on to the coffee table as he took his seat. Two plates were put right next to the box on the table. "These things are going to kill us some day, Bro."

"What a way to go!" I stated happily, opening the box and cutting myself an extra large slice.

"Here. Here."

"Sooo," I started, giving Charlie a sideways glance, "You want to tell me what tonight's tactical engagement was all about?"

"Guess."

"You've found several dozen baby books 'conveniently' lying around the house with baby names underlined and highlighted?"

Charlie shuddered visibly. "Not yet."

"He pulled out our baby pictures, took Amita hostage, and rambled for hours about what beautiful children you'd produce together?"

Charlie gave me a look that resembled a cute furry creature in its last moments right before it met its untimely death by on-coming traffic, and squeaked out "He wouldn't actually do that...Would he?"

"Oh yes," I affirmed gleefully. "He has no problems with inflicting civilian casualties. He'll even produce studies about how the longer a man waits to have children, the greater risk of birth defects in the offspring. The fact he hasn't done this yet leads us to the conclusion either he's mellowing in his old age."

"Mellowing. Yeah, like that's gonna happen," Charlie announced as he cut a slice of cake for himself.

"OR," I continued, "He's plotting. Since he for all intents and purposes raised me, I tend to see Dad as the most devious, scheming, human being on the face of the planet, and/or Satan himself, so I lean more towards 'plotting' then 'mellowing'. It's a personal judgment call."

Charlie suddenly sighed and blurted out, "I really dislike that woman you know?"

"Since I was considering going back to my car for my S.W.A.T. gear tonight, you hid it so well."

Charlie flinched, "Sorry." He sighed again, "I know Mom's gone and Dad's going to move on."

"But?" I prompted.

"He was talking about Millie the other day and he had that look on his face. You know? That soft one he always wore when he talks about mom, and I just saw red."

Oh Boy.

I miss Larry.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt would have some incredibly insightful Zen, warm, cuddly, weird, deep, cosmic metaphor that would guide Charlie to a new larger perspective on the situation. I, on the other hand, do not do warm and/or cuddly and meaning of life celestial metaphors make my head want to explode.

In other words: I was probably going to screw this up. Big time.

"Charlie." I took a deep breath hoping my younger brother would at least give me points for honestly if not for finesse and style, "Of the two of us, you were closer to Mom. She essentially raised you. Knowing she's gone and accepting she's gone are two different things. There's a lot of emotional stuff from her death you didn't deal with and still need to shovel." I turned to look him in the eye. "Just don't beat Dad bloody with the shovel while you're shoveling it."

He was quiet, considering my words for few moments, and suddenly broke the silence by asking, "So what's your opinion of Millie?"

"I never thought I'd see Dad cast as the role of Beauty in "Beauty and the Beast".

Charlie choked on his forkful of cheesecake. "You're terrible." He managed to grasp out, "What scares me is, she thinks you're actually the nice one." Suddenly he got a strange look on his face and gestured from him to me, "Are we having an Oprah moment here?"

Horrified at the mere thought, I scooted over to the furthest end of the couch, "You get teary-eyed, or try to hug me. I'm going hit you."

"You know, Don," Charlie dryly retorted, "Your ability to open up and express your inner-most feelings is one thing I truly admire about you."

"Hard."

"I SO feel the love in this room right now."

"Just stay on your end of the couch, Mr. Sensitive."

After Charlie and I had our 'Oprah' moment, we did the only thing any two emotionally damaged, not-in-touch-with-our –feelings males like us could after coming within a hundred yards of any of that touchy-feely crap. We tried to expunge 'the incident' from our memories as quickly as possible by getting completely trashed.

Okay, I retract that statement.

Charlie got pickled. I got buzzed enough to lose my installed "Dad's going to kill us" default brain-washing ingrained from my teenage years, and introduced Charlie to a drinkable little piece of heaven, made to go with cheesecake, by the name of Baileys. Let's just say Charlie embraced the lesson with the same passionate, enthusiasm he brought to everything else in life.

That could probably explain the reason I woke up with my face stuck to the Scrabble board and my father glaring down at me, looking like he was mere seconds from going completely nuclear.

Then again, it might be the Christmas light display that Charlie and I hung at one in the morning, too. Our front yard outrage could be sponsored by the words "Taste" and "Bad" in no particular order, and without a doubt should not be viewed by anyone with a smidgen of decency or one iota of class. I was really too busy howling with laughter from the hydrangea bushes at Charlie's antics to really keep track of what he did to poor Frosty.

You know? I'd really forgotten exactly how much fun Charlie could be after a few drinks. Alcohol tends to strip away the uptight, reserve he always hides behind and stomps out that desperate need for approval streak of his. It's like getting a fast-forward sneak peek at the person Charles Eppes will be in a few years when he's grown comfortable enough in his own skin to stop caring what the world thinks of him. I really like that person. I'm enjoying watching him emerge slowly from his shell too.

My father, on the other hand...

"Nice pants, Dad. Didn't you have a pair just like them on last night?"

With that opening volley, my father's scowling face got darker, leaving little doubt in my mind that if he had the Zeus-like gift to throw lighting bolts, I'd be nothing more than a smothering corpse right now, first born son or not. Screw it. I learned a long time ago in this family a good defense is an even better offense.

Besides who did my Dad really think he was fooling with just changing out of his shirt from last night, anyway? It might sneak pass Charlie's naive notice, but please give me a little credit for being the teenage hellion I was. If they gave out PhD's for sneaking around, I would have been a world renowned leader in my field at sixteen.

"So," Dad began calmly, framing his next words in the form of an alluring leading question, "What did you and your brother do last night after Millie and I left?" And people wonder why I aced FBI interrogation training 101? My Dad really could have taught my trainers at Quantico a thing or two about grilling tactics.

"We did a little brotherly bonding," I replied trying to pull off the butter-wouldn't-melt innocent act all the while trying to find a point of leverage to release my face from the Scrabble board. Who knew drool and paper could bond like that? I didn't. I really hoped it wasn't the Scrabble tiles that spelled out the word "Loser" that had left the impression on my forehead. I had a really bad feeling those were the tiles though. "You've been after us to spend time together that didn't involve crime scene photos."

Chuck owes me twenty bucks. His friend in the anthropology department did model that Aztec priest in his human sacrifice exhibit after Dad. Charlie's friend didn't quite capture the essence of the angry, I-plan-to-make-you-suffer, wrath-of-the-gods expression though.

"What do you suppose your mother would have thought of this 'brotherly bonding' you think?"

I gave a good push and managed to disengage my face from the game board and replied, "Probably that we need a touch more tinsel, maybe a few more lights."

One of these days I'm going to learn that when I'm in a deep hole, to stop digging.


	3. Chapter 3

"What, no lecture about using alcohol to fill our empty, inner waste land? Or how I should keep Charlie's spare kidney in good working order," I asked suspiciously when my father remained silent after my tinsel remark.

No way would Alan Eppes ever take Pimp Master Frosty lying down.

"You know, Don," My father ground out between clenched teeth. "It is stupid remarks like that second one that really make me want to smack you hard upside the head."

A more naive person may think my father might let this topic drop gracefully. I knew better. Not my father. My Dad is a fierce defender of free will, free press, and uncensored creative expression, without a doubt. Just not for his sons. He was switching tactics. Angling to get me on the ropes, and I could tell he was settling for nothing short of a knock-out this morning.

"You have the moral high ground on the subject of withholding information from family members, for once. I wouldn't want to take that moment from you. It comes so rarely. Enjoy it," My father stated in tone I'd come to dread. Experience had taught me when he used that particular tone I had already lost the argument, I just didn't know it yet. It was just the matter of to what degree he had decided he was going to make me suffer first. "You and Charlie are both over twenty-one."

That was WAY too easy.

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at my father and demanded, "What are you plotting?"

"Plotting?" My father asked pleasantly, "I don't know what you mean?"

Oh, whatever he was scheming was going to bad. I knew it. This was going to be bringing my Batman lunch box from elementary school, holding it up high in the middle of the bullpen for all my co-workers to see and announcing at the top of his lungs, "Donnie, I packed your lunch" type of painful.

"Besides," My Dad was suddenly looking me over like he was a predator and me the cute, hapless, furry mammal on his la cart menu for the morning meal, "I'm in a very forgiving mood this morning since Charlie agreed to Millie's idea of all of us sharing our New Year's resolutions as a means to get to know each other better."

"Charlie still doesn't understand the concept of 'anything you say can and will be used against you' rule for the police state we live in," I declared, all the while images of Charlie, jagged rocks, and the fatal falling height of sixty-one feet dancing through my head. Eagles have it SO easy. "He was being sarcastic. And you know it."

"Your brother said and I quote, "Oh yes, that's a brilliant idea". As a parent I chose to ignore the sarcasm," My father stated happily. He had me on the ropes and he knew it, too. "I also invoke the parent's right of what one sibling must do, so must the other. Wouldn't want you to feel left out of the family festivities or think I was playing favorites."

It is reasons like this why, in their fantasies, serial killers murder their families over and over again.

"This is sinking to a new low even for you."

"Low?" My father asked trying his best innocent look, "I have no idea what you mean."

"You are ruthlessly using your girlfriend, and the fact she's Charlie's boss, to shamelessly fish for more insights in to our psyches. That way you can use them to enhance your ability to screw with our heads and better target your relentless campaign for grandchildren."

"A better parent would try to deny it." My father suddenly got an expression on his face and the only way to describe it was the expression the Grinch wore the very moment when he decided Who-ville was going down. "Besides my on-line support group for families of law enforcement,"

On-line support group?

"Who has given me some wonderful insights, insists..."

Insights?

"I should keep trying to involve you in family activities. Mary especially, her daughter Beth is FBI by the way, tells me it's very important."

Oh, dear God, no.

Please, tell me, he didn't.

"Mary has been so wonderful with her advice. I invited both her and Beth to dinner next time they're in town."

There was the knock-out.

I was on the mat, drooling. I knew it, too. Payback was truly an art form, and my father a genius way ahead of his time. Intellectually speaking, around this household, I had always been a pit-bull trapped in a toy poodle body. One day I was going to learn to roll over and present my belly to the Alpha like the unfortunate critter at the bottom of the food chain that I was.

Not today.

But some day.

"You know, Dad? That offer for the retirement community in Florida is still on the table. If you leap on it now, before this upcoming New Year's massacre, I still might even be able to strong arm Charlie in to pitching in to help pay for a place that will actually unchain you from the bed."

"Just for the record, Stan inherits everything," My father stated happily as he headed in to the kitchen. "So you can just get the idea of big insurance payouts out of your head."

"Who said anything about money? I plan not to set the hand brake when I park you at the top of the stairs, just for the fun of it."

Suddenly my father was handing me a hot cup of coffee. "So while you were 'bonding' with your brother last night. Did he give you any helpful insights in to what's been bothering him?"

"He's mom's son." And that was all I was going to say on the matter. Charlie's secrets were just that; Charlie's secrets. Besides I knew what it was like to be forced to choose between your family and a woman you cared for. It was an awful spot to be in. I was not putting my father there.

"Why do I think that vague statement is one of your packed-with-meaning ones that drives me crazy?" My father grumbled. "Kind of like the time I called you and asked you how your life was, and your reply was, 'Pins and Needles'. Only for me to later find out a suspect had tackled you off a roof and you needed two pins put in your shoulder, and when I called the needles were still connecting various tubes."

My only comment was a grunt as I took a sip of my coffee.

My father sighed, "All Charlie and I seem to do anymore is argue over every little thing. Add in since Charlie is tucked snuggly away in bed, and you're way too coherent to be hung over. I have a pretty good idea I know who's responsible for the monstrosity on the front lawn, too."

I studied the black depths of my coffee for a few moments before replying, "What's bothering Charlie isn't about you, Dad. Okay? It's something he's got to work through. And please don't give Charlie too hard time about last night. I needed it more than he did."

"Yeah about that," My father took a sip of his coffee and continued, "I noticed you didn't eat last night when I cleared the table."

"I wasn't hungry. I had a rough day at the office."

"You've been having a lot of 'rough days' recently." Dad was eyeing me up and down with a concerned look on his face, "I couldn't help but notice the sweats you keep over here to sleep in are starting to hang on you in spots."

"I'm fine"

"Would you tell me if you weren't?"

"I am fine, Dad." I stated matter of fact. "I had few of my migraines recently."

"Please define the Don Eppes' parameters of a 'few'."

"A couple." I announced, suddenly very annoyed. What was it with parents that despite how old you were they could suddenly make you feel six years old again? "Blurry vision. Some Aura. Nausea. Light sensitivity. No emergency room visits. Happy?"

"Don, there have been huge advancements..."

"Don't start," I snapped. I had heard it all before, numerous times, in fact. "I've lived with these since I was six. Besides these migraines aren't nearly as bad or as frequent as the ones I had when I first moved home."

"More reason to be proactive now and..."

"Dad."

"Your brother could do a little research..."

"Drop it."

"Maybe get a referral..."

"No."

My father and I just glared at each other across the table when this clichéd, cheesy western-like stand-off was broken up by my pager suddenly going off and my cell phone ringing.

"This discussion is not over."

"Yes. It is." I replied back. Reaching for my cell phone I flipped it open and snarled, "This had better be good. I'm not on until midnight."

"Sorry to bother you, Don." It was Megan's voice on the other end of the line.

"What's wrong?"

"Someone screwed up on the warrant we moved on yesterday. Everything we got is inadmissible."

Crap.

"I'll be right in."


	4. Chapter 4

**Warnings:** Mentions child abuse and the death of a child. This part isn't pretty folks.

**Authors Notes:** I'm working off the assumption that Charlie and Don were raised between faiths.

I remember when I was younger, my father lecturing Charlie and me about how you shouldn't assign numbers to people. Later at a college lecture, I discovered the reason for it, about how Jewish tradition believed when you assigned a number to a person, turned them in to a cold statistic, you stripped away their personal identity.

As an FBI agent I been trained to detachment and impersonalize. Taught to look at the worst humanity can dish out and break it down in to impersonal information and data. Take a parent's grief, or a spouse's worst nightmare, a million shattered hopes and dreams, and turn them in to facts and figures. The days I'm looking right at a parent as I coldly give an account of the last horrible, gruesome moments of their child's life to a jury. The times I watch a defense attorney try to shift the blame from his serial rapist client to his victim on the stand. I wonder if we as a society are guilty of striping away personal identities and turning victims to faceless numbered masses.

Case number: 000618253867

The half-staved little girl who had clutched her grubby Pooh Bear to her as she confessed to me she was scared. The ten year old child with the big doe brown eyes who had told me, as we waited for the ambulance, that she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up because she wanted to help people. The tiny girl that had convulsed to death in my arms because her mother, who was supposed to love and protect her, killed her by feeding her drug balloons.

I didn't even have a name to call her.

Her mother had never bothered to name her.

She was the reason I blew through the door of the bull-pen planning to reach down the unfortunate person's throat who had screwed up my warrant and remove the hard way the dim seven-watt bulb he called a brain. Her mother would be spending a very long time in jail. I wanted her mother's drug-running pimp. He had used this little girl as street currency, and I had planned on them both rotting in the deepest, darkest, smelliest sewer I could find.

I hated it when stupidity screwed up my plans.

It made me cranky.

My mood must have been leaking through that morning despite the game face I had slapped on. I noticed that people in the bull-pen weren't bothering with idle chit-chat as I walked through because they quickly scurried of my way.

"Who screwed up?" were the very first words out of my mouth as I threw my briefcase down on my desk. Megan didn't respond right away and sat studying me like she was considering her answer very carefully.

"That would have been my office," A very familiar voice announced from over my left shoulder.

"Counselor Brooks." I turned to acknowledge her coldly, "Then you wouldn't mind filling us all in on what happened."

There are couples who can stay friends after they break up. Robin and I weren't one of them. Not only had we blown the naïve notion of us "being friends" out of the water the night we broke up, we had pulled our boots on and stomped the sucker flat, too. Who ever had coined the old cliché 'words can never hurt me' was full of it. Give me the choice between facing down some well aimed meant-to-wound break-up words and flying bullets. I'd take bullets any day.

"I'm still not sure of all the details just yet," Robin replied, her tone mirroring my flat unemotional one. "All I know is the judge threw out everything we sieved from yesterday's raid on the grounds the warrant was filed incorrectly. My office is appealing the decision this morning."

"Nice to know that those things are carefully checked over," Colby Granger announced. No one could miss the acid disdain in his tone. Robin narrowed her eyes and stepped towards Colby. I put myself between them, making my unspoken point clear to Robin that she was going to have to go through me to get to Granger. Granger's mouth may have a knack for shooting off at inappropriate times but this time his frustration was more than justified.

"We do have some good news," Megan added in. "We never recovered Andrews' flash drive from the scene. That means we didn't collect it under our bad warrant and any evidence on it is still admissible."

"We think he stashed it at the scene," David stated matter-of-fact. "So we file for a new warrant and go looking for it."

"Done," Robin announced. "That was the first thing our office did this morning."

I had avoided Robin since we broke up. Nothing hurts more than knowing you tried to make it work and your best wasn't good enough. It had been too raw. Our break up had opened up too many old unhealed wounds. So I steered clear of her. A well-adjusted adult, aware we may be forced to work closely together in the future, would most likely take this as an opportunity to bury the hatchet and try to patch together some semblance of a working relationship.

So, me being the mature individual I am, did I jump on the opportunity to run away, and to go hide in a crack house instead?

You bet.

I never claimed to be a well-adjusted adult.

"David, Colby go with Robin and wait for the judge's decision on the evidence we sieved yesterday," I ordered. "Megan, you're with me. We'll jump back to the scene and oversee the search for that missing flash drive."

_You know the reason why you prioritize psychopaths and dead people over living people in your life, Don? Because they're the only beings more broken and more disconnected from humanity than you are. _

I tried not to think about the last words Robin had said to me as she slammed out my door that night. Seeing her again today had brought it all to the surface with a clarity I resented. Words were not supposed to be able wound you unless you let them. Yet Robin's words had blown through years of carefully crafted shields like armor piercing bullets through cheap Kevlar.

"Let me tell you about this guy I got to know at the office," Megan started softly from the passenger seat, "He has more lives than a cat, which is a good thing, counting the number of times he's put his on the line for others. He stalks his father obsessively to get his flu shot every year. He nags his younger brother to stop leaving his keys in the door. He's cynical, arrogant, insecure, prickly as a cactus, and self-reliant to the point that anyone that cares about him wants to strangle him."

"He takes care of his own and has this very annoying habit of saving their sorry skins when they least expect it. When he turns on the charm, he's a delight to be around. Funny, classy, smart, one of the last true bred gentlemen out there. When he doesn't turn on the charm, he's still the best Senior Agent I've ever had the privilege to serve under and an unrelenting, gum-snapping, sarcastic, pain in the ass."

"Don," Megan continued, "Whatever Robin may have said to you, keep in mind she sees only the cleaned up edited version of what we see every day. Crime scene photos and witness testimony, ugly as they are, aren't the same as actually wading through another person's entrails at a crime scene, or having a little girl convulse to death in your arms. We impersonalize, distance, and indulge in our bad jokes as a very normal way to survive our job with our sanity intact."

I was touched, and had no clue how to respond to Megan's words and a little stunned she had learned to read me like that. I never even suspected she thought that highly of me. Goes to show what an emotional disaster area I am. I thrive in chaos and panic during warm-fuzzy. "Thanks," seemed to be the only response my shell-shocked brain could come up with.

"You're welcome," Megan answered. "Since I used my allotted mush minutes on you this month, I expect you to answer a personal question, Boss Man."

"You got one question before I lawyer up, Agent Reeves. Make it a good one."

"Chanukah or Christmas?"

"Both," I replied, amused at Megan's irritated expression. "Why? Trying to figure out what should be on the front of the gift card you give me?"

Megan shot me an exasperated look and retorted, "I'm not getting you a gift card this year. Not since I found out you spent the last one I gave you on your brother. I'm getting you some tacky office gift like everyone else."

"I'm sure I'll love it as much as the leopard print seat cover the three of you gave me for my chair on Boss's Day," I countered dryly. "The crimson, sequined, satin pillows really added that much needed touch of class my cube needed."

"Matter of pride. We couldn't let Fraud get away thinking they had all the style in the office," Megan replied grinning. "Besides you know you love us."

"It is unfounded remarks like that which start nasty office rumors."

"Speaking of classy," Megan declared, suddenly changing the topic. "Granger drove by Charlie's house this morning. He was so moved by your exhibit of holiday cheer he e-mailed pictures of your elegantly done light display to the entire office. The drunk, passed-out reindeer and the grandma legs sticking out from under Santa's sled with the ruby slippers on, I must say, was very attractively done in that commit-blasphemy-against-the-classics type of way."

"Granger had better have clicked his heels and said there's no place like home before I get back to the office," I stated sweetly. "Because when I get my hands on our little Dorothy, I'm going to get him and his little dog, too."

Drug Addiction is ugly.

It's the reason why the TV news never shows the inside of garbage filled crack houses or the junkies going through withdraw hooked up to banana bags. No one really wants to see it. People would rather keep their comforting prime-time created illusions about addiction. You don't realize exactly how ugly it is until you have seen it up close. Witnessed how it destroys families. Seen the child abuse it spawns.

This crack house was worse than most. The trash came up to your thighs in some rooms and there was human waste every where. The urine smell of the place was gagging. The crime scene team was going to have their hands full shifting through everything. Logging the scene could take days. Finding a two inch flash drive in this mess was going to be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I didn't want to think about the body outline on the floor or how my team found that little girl nested and hiding in the garbage.

"We're missing something obvious," I announced to Megan, pinching my nose in frustration, "That flash drive has to be here."

"We know Andrews never left this room thanks to surveillance. We know he had the drive on him," Megan stated, going through what happened one last time. "He never left this room despite the fact he made us."

"Right, "I added in. "So the crime scene team worked from the assumption he either threw away or stashed it in a pile of garbage somewhere in this room before we grabbed him." I took a deep breath and tried to push down the memory of that little girl's bony arms reaching out to me. "That little girl we found was covered from head to toe in rat bites. They were scurrying all over the place, too."

"Rats like small, shiny things," Megan stated, completing my thought. "You think a rat carried it off."

I simply nodded.

Oh yeah, the day was off to a wonderful start.


	5. Chapter 5

New-age, feel-good experts will tell you that anger isn't good for you. I disagree. Anger protects you. That hot bubbling fury can give you that extra push you need to knock a home run out of the park. It can make you work a little harder for that scholarship. Rage can give you those last desperate reserves you need to survive. Anger can pull you though the crash and burn of a broken relationship or your mother's last morphine filled last days when she kept calling you by your brother's name.

Anger can be like that favorite comforting blanket from your childhood. Throw it around yourself and it can make you strong. Give you the power to face yourself. Give you the strength to do what you need to.

Even face down an ex-girlfriend.

Besides, if Robin thought she was going to lay the blame squarely on my team for this entire wretched case heading south, she had another thing coming to her. Mess with my people and I become a really nasty sand-box bully fast. I was the agent in charge at the scene of this fiasco and the buck stopped with me. Leave my people out of it.

The only bright spot of this day from hell was that I managed to annoy and infuriate Robin on an hourly basis. Not a bad day's work, but not a huge achievement in the scheme of things either considering the fact that I was simply breathing seemed to accomplish that. Robin was pissed at me because her office lost at the super-expanded grown-up version of that old grade school playground classic of "Did Not", "Did Too".

Isn't always nice to see two mature adults put the personal problems aside and work in a professional manner?

Ms. My-Office-Doesn't-Know-How-To-File-A-Warrant could bite me.

This case had been nothing but FUBAR from the very start, let me tell you. Ranging from our faulty intell, and us not knowing about that little girl being there, going in. From Robin's office misfiling our warrant, to my gut hunch that maybe Blinky the gangster rodent carried off our shiny flash drive to decorate his digs with. Cases like this were always fun. Explaining cases like this to your boss were even more fun.

Pile of laughs, let me tell you.

I had to give Merrick credit. He did seem to understand that some days you are just the totally unlucky SOB standing in front of the fan when the crap hits. When I got called in to his office that afternoon, I fully expected to get yelled at about the missing flash drive. Merrick surprised me by chewing me out about Agent Stendahauser's new computer instead.

It appears that I somehow managed to scramble some serial numbers so Stendahauser's antique computer "accidentally" got switched in for a prop and blown to pieces in one of our tactical exercises. After taking several hundred rounds of automatic weapons fire, and then getting dropped out of a second story window, there was no way of saving her old one. Due to my little "mix-up", the department had to buy her a brand new computer that didn't crash every ten minutes and take the budget hit for it.

Whoops.

So with how my day was going, I really shouldn't have been surprised to find this note on my desk after I got out of Merrick's office.

SOME KNOWN TRIGGERS OF MIGRAINES:

Lack of sleep

Stress

Chocolate

Beer

Meat

Monosodium glutamate: aka Used in Chinese food seasoning

DON'S DIET AND/OR LIFESTYLE

Sleep—What's that? It's that thing you do with your eyes closed for eight hours. Remember?

Stress—Relax? You do that on something called a vacation. Something you haven't taken in quite a while.

Chocolate- Despite what you might think: Not a food

Beer- Again NOT a food group

Meat- Nature grows green things called vegetables. Try them some time.

Monosodium glutamate- Do you actually have ANY food besides Chinese take-out at your apartment?

Dinner this week, it's not a request.

I called in a refill of your Imitrex. Pick it up. Not a request either.

Dad

Charlie was so wrong when he accused Dad of treating me more like an adult than him. Dad treated us both like ten year-olds, just in very different ways. Dad was much more understated in his perfected hovering techniques with me than he was with Charlie. Dad could usually openly bully Charlie to do what he thought was best for him. Me, on the other hand, Dad knew from experience bullying went nowhere fast, so he usually stalked me until I caved and did what he wanted.

Exhibit A: The note I'm holding in my hand.

The "Do you have any food" line in the note made me a little nervous. Dad better not had not used his key to my apartment to put anything green and/or with nutritional value into the fridge. The key he, of course, continued to deny he had. The malevolent machine would most likely stage a protest by blowing up and bellowing huge stacks of black toxic smoke. It didn't like vegetables in the crisper anymore than I did.

Unlike Charlie, who fully embraced and accepted his inner-slob, I was raised with SOME shame. The fact that I hadn't washed the bed in so long the sheets could creep away on their own. The large dust bunnies in the corners I could use as booby-traps against unsuspecting assailants breaking in. The green stuff (or at least it was green) in the container in the back of my refrigerator was going to be my future contribution to the sciences because I was pretty sure it had evolved in to a new toxic life form on its own. This was stuff I just didn't want my father to see.

Something in my expression must have clued Megan in to who the note was from. As she sat down at her desk, she announced cheerfully, "I love watching you interacting with your natural family grouping. It's like watching those male-struggle-for-dominance specials on Animal Planet up close."

I was just about to fire back a retort when my cell phone rang.

When I answered I had no clue it was going to be one of those life-altering moments.

"Charlie, calm down. What happened to Dad?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Authors Notes:** I'm working off the assumption that Charlie and Don were raised between faiths.

Ever have a time when you're sucker-punched and you realize in the not too distant future that you and your parents will one day switch places? That one day caretakers would be come the cared for. That people whom you've always depended on to know all the answers, to be in your corner, weren't always going to be there. My first one had come the night my mom had blurted out over the phone, "I have cancer".

Charlie's phone call telling me he had to take my father to the hospital was another.

"Excuse me," I announced as I raced over to the hospital's admissions desk and addressed the sour-faced nurse on duty there, "I'm looking for father Alan Eppes. My brother called and said he was being brought here."

"I thought I made it perfectly clear the last time I threw you three out of here. I didn't want to see any of the Eppes' smiling faces again."

I turned in the direction of the voice and standing there was Dr. Carla "Doc" Holmes. Doc was four-foot nine-inches of stainless-steel, take-no-crap ER doctor. You gave her any attitude, and she made you drop your pants for tetanus boosters and refrigerated bed pans. First responders and law enforcement across the city were scared to death of her and cowered in fear at the mere thought of being hauled in to her emergency room. There were even rumors she made a S.W.A.T. guy cry once.

My father couldn't have been in better hands.

Doc had been friend of the family all the way back from the time my mom had been sick. My mom and she had hit it off like two peas in a pod from the very first time they met. Ironically it hadn't have been my mom's cancer that had introduced them, but me being brought in for a liter of fluids and some Phenergan and Demerol for one of my nastier migraines. As mom had gotten sicker, Carla had been the one to sit me down on her rare lunch hours away from the ER and help me navigate the chaotic nightmare of healthcare forms and fighting with health insurance bureaucracy.

"Doc," I acknowledged. Seeing her made me feel a whole lot calmer.

"Your dad is back in exam room eleven," she stated to me matter-of-fact, "I'll take you back there now."

I breathed a huge internal sigh of relief when I walked into my dad's examine area and got a good look at him. Dad had that grey, sunken complexion that came from being in a lot of pain. He also had his shoe off and a very swollen ankle iced and elevated up on the exam table. Considering all the nightmare scenarios that had went through my mind the moment my brother called to tell me that he was taking Dad to the hospital, I was thrilled to see the totally exasperated expression that crossed my father's face when I walked in.

He then announced to Charlie, "I told you NOT to call your brother", then to me, "Shoot your brother."

With that last remark I felt the last bit of icy panic that had been sitting between my shoulder blades fall away.

I raised an eyebrow at my father's comment and replied, "Why? He's the runt. Not for good eating."

"Hey!" Charlie exclaimed with mock outrage.

"Your ability to always embrace your inner barbarian," My father proclaimed, glaring at me, "Never ceases to amaze me, Don."

"It's the reason why I embrace Feng Shui and arrange my bed to always point towards Sha Chi." I stated dryly, "And leave my lack of domestic skills out of this."

"Your apartment smells like a zoo cage," Dad retorted snidely. "And this is your brother's fault. He left the damned box in the middle of the floor for me to trip over."

I raised an eyebrow at Charlie and asked, "Crawl space?"

"Yeah," Charlie responded. "I moved some boxes out to climb in and look for something. I even yelled at him to be careful." Then he turned to my father, shot him a look, and stated, "He wasn't listening. Obviously."

"Oh, don't give me that look, Charles Eppes," my father snarled back, "I taught you that look."

"Gentlemen, keep it up and I'm going to give the three of you the rectal exam to end all rectal exams," Carla announced in her best break-it-up voice. "Now that I've got the Griswold's together, we're going to try this again. First question: Name?"

"Alan Smith," my father stated-matter-of-fact. "I'm not claiming to be related to Euclid250 over there until he learns how to run his blog through spell-check."

"You can check off 'patient is lucid and snarking'," Charlie commented sarcastically, pointing at the clip board.

Carla took a deep breath and shot me a how-the-hell-did-your-mother-do-it expression. Taking another deep cleansing breath, she announced, moving on, "Okay, Alan Eppes. Next question, have you had anything to drink today?"

"No," my father growled. "Despite the ghastly discovery in my oldest son's apartment that his sheets were slithering after me."

"They guard my territory well, thrive in my negative energy, and don't require feeding," I replied, shrugging.

Carla was wearing the very same expression my mom used to wear when she was carefully weighing the odds of getting away with holding the three of our heads underwater until we stopped struggling. I could tell already that the three of us were going to get marched out of here at scalpel point. But hey, that was completely normal and standard operating procedure for the Eppes family. Carla muttered under her breath, "I always knew living with the three of you, we didn't give Margaret near enough drugs."

"Charlie, go take your brother down to the cafeteria and get something to eat." My father suddenly ordered and his tone left no room to argue. Dad then shifted on the table and I couldn't help but notice the flinch he tried to hide. "Make sure he actually eats something healthy, too."

Blinking in shock at my father's sudden change in topic, Charlie stumbled out "But..."

My father shot me that look that said 'take care of your brother' and I grabbed Charlie's shoulder and started leading him out of the room. "Come on."

It wasn't until we were a distance down the hallway that Charlie finally asked, "Shouldn't one of us stay with him?"

I just shook my head and led him in to the elevator, "No. Trust me on this. Dad will never come clean to Doc about how bad he's hurting with either of us in the room."

"We're not five anymore. He doesn't need to protect us."

I pushed the elevator button. "Doesn't matter. He's going to do it anyway. He's our Dad." I eyed Charlie sideways and asked, "How about you? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he replied flatly.

I studied Charlie out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't help but notice the set tightness around the eyes and mouth, and I got a little worried. I could tell by the look he had shot me in the examination room that Dad was obviously concerned about Charlie, too. I sighed softly to myself because getting Charlie to talk was going to be much more difficult than I first thought.

Not that I was any authority at the whole touchy-feeling talking thing anyway.

A small time later, we were standing in line at the snack counter waiting to pay for our meals. Charlie grabbed a medium-sized salad and put it on the tray next to my sandwich.

"You are SO whipped. You know that?" I declared rolling my eyes at him.

"I'm whipped. I admit it," Charlie replied. "Humor me. I'm paying."

It was his turn to roll his eyes at me when I grabbed a bottle of orange Gatorade out of the cooler and placed it on his tray with a, "Humor me. After last night you need the electrolytes."

"Who were you accusing of being whipped again, Donnie dearest?" Charlie asked sarcastically as he handed some money to the woman at the counter.

"I've moved up to 'Donnie, dearest', have I? It makes a pleasant change from 'Don, stop being a stubborn idiot'!" I replied. "Besides I might have grown rather...fond...of having you and dad around to mooch off of."

"Fond?" Charlie asked as we walked over to empty table and put our trays down.

"Don't make me lose my appetite by making this a mush moment."

"It's tender examples like this I wonder what I would ever do without my big brother around to help stunt my emotional growth and invent ever more insulting nicknames for me."

"Keep the sentimentality oozing like that, Mathboy, and someone might actually get the notion we're related or something."

"Heaven forbid," Charlie answered. Then he changed the topic by suddenly asking. "I thought you didn't like tuna?"

"I don't," I replied, "I just had the craving for it tonight. Maybe I'm pregnant."

"Dad will be thrilled." Charlie scrutinized me with the intensity he usually reserved for math equations, "Are you sure you're okay? You're looking...I don't know... off?"

"I'm fine." I waved off his concern, "It's just been a very lousy day."

"I can relate."

"So you want to tell me why you were taking your life in to your hands up in the crawl space?"

"I was looking for our Chanukah Menorah," Charlie stated, "It's not packed away with our Christmas decorations. Mom always insisted that if the Christmas decorations came out, it did too. I moved some boxes out to climb in to look for it, and you know the rest of the story."

Sometimes it amazes me the things you tie to 'home' and how that Menorah was tied in to so many of my happier childhood memories. I still remember how Mom used to go across town every year to buy special beeswax candles for it. How after the candles were lit, their scent would drift though the house, mixing with the smell of the latkes frying, and the Christmas cookies baking in the oven. Sometimes when I closed my eyes, I could still hear mom's voice echoing from the kitchen ordering my brother to keep his fingers out of the apple sauce.

"You can stop looking for it," I informed him. "It's over at my place."

Charlie blinked at me curiously, "It is?"

"Yeah," I replied in an I-rather-not-talk-about-it tone, "I can bring it over to the house later. Let's finish eating and get back to Dad."

&&&&&

"You know Alan? You have the most exquisite bones."

I just shook my head. I might been dancing for glee at the thought of Millie having a little competition IF Carla had actually been looking AT my father and not the x-ray in front of her when she had said that remark. She was practically salivating all over the x-ray.

"How you doing, Dad?" I asked, looking down at my father on the examining table and trying to change the topic.

"I can't feel my nose," my father replied, "Actually, I'm pretty sure I can't feel anything from my forehead down."

Ah, the good drugs.

"Talk about a near perfect textbook break," Carla announced, still not bothering to look up from the x-ray.

"Lucky me," he grumbled.

Carla was looking at the x-ray with the same near orgasmic look my father got when he talked about catastrophic building or bridge failures. It was also the same gleefully expression that Charlie and Larry got when they got going about predicting odds of planetary doom. It was official. I was never going to understand science types.

"Alan, I want you off that leg and keep it iced and elevated for at least a week. I only want you up on crutches for short periods of time. Rest of the time, I want that leg up and elevated."

My father looked at Charlie, gave me a pitiful look, and announced, "I'm going to end up one of those lead stories on the evening news about how a person ate themselves to survive."

Charlie gave my father a totally indignant look and retorted, "My cooking is not THAT bad."

My father and I just exchanged a look. My brother was exceptionally gifted in many areas. Cooking wasn't one of them. Of course, Dad's and my opinions might be a little biased in this particular matter. Food poisoning tends to have that affect on you. But it did take a lot for Larry Fleinhardt to suggest freezing small samples of Charlie's cooking so antidotes could be found in case terrorists used it as a future bio-weapon.

"I'm going to starve," my father stated with certainty.

Charlie glared at my father, "I CAN make soup."

My father shot me a desperate please-don't-leave-me look.

With that one look, I did what I always do with my father: Caved like a house of cards in an earthquake.

I am SO whipped.

Clearing my throat, I muttered, "I guess, I could pack a bag and stay at the house for a while."


	7. Chapter 7

**Additional Warning:** This chapter deals with the subject of child abuse and the death of a child.

There are days where everything is raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Today was NOT one of them. In fact, if Jiminy Cricket showed up tonight and started singing "When You Wish upon a Star", I'd squash him. Grind him good and proper right in to the carpet.

Yes. I am that hateful of a person.

I might take a few pot shots at Tinkerbell for the hell of it, too.

As usual we got marched out of Carla's ER under the threat of Foley catheters and getting our mouths permanently glued shut with Mr. Yuck stickers if we dared show our faces in her ER again. At least that was the gist of her tirade. She used some phrases like, "If you three value your pathetic, meaningless co-dependent lives..." and, "I will not be responsible for the damage I will do...".

Who would have thought?

We caught Doc in one of her more laid-back moods.

"What are you thinking?" Charlie said, while we climbed the stairs up to my apartment.

I shrugged as I put my key in to my apartment door, "That we caught Doc in one of her mellower moods tonight."

Charlie grinned at me, "Doc mentioned she took her ex back to court and won this week. While we were waiting for you to arrive she was gloating obscenely about her ex-husband was still cursing the name of her original divorce lawyer."

"Mom would be so proud."

"Yup."

I rolled my eyes as I opened my door, "Am I the only one that caught the not-so-subtle message behind it when mom pretty much volunteered to do that divorce for Carla free of charge?"

Charlie snickered as we both walked in to my apartment, "Subtle? Dad had just gotten this pretty new engineer at work."

"You forgot the whole her flirting with Dad shamelessly part."

"Carla caught her husband cheating on her."

"Mom mercilessly helped Carla take her cheating husband to the cleaners."

"You didn't buy the whole excuse Mom gave about how she owed it to Carla for coming over that night when you were fifteen and formulating a solvent that unglued us without us needing surgical intervention and skin graphs, either?"

"Ah, your short-lived chemistry days," I announced, throwing my jacket on the couch. "And no, I didn't believe it for a minute. That was, without a doubt, a little display to remind Dad who the alpha bitch of the pack was."

"It was kind of hard to miss when they slapped the "You don't know a woman until you've met her in court" bumper sticker on the back of his brand new Mercedes."

"Officially, it was Carla's Mercedes," I reminded him. "She won it in the divorce. And that was a lot nicer than the 'Real woman screw you in heels' that had been their first choice."

Charlie chuckled under his breath and did what any single male did when entering another's territory; headed straight for the refrigerator. "Mom was always a bit of the jealous type."

"Dad got off on every minute of it. I caught him bragging once about how he still couldn't believe a woman like mom ever fell for an engineering nerd like him."

"Dad was not a nerd."

"Have you seen his high school pictures?" I fired back. "He had a pencil protector and a slide ruler. That qualifies him as a nerd."

"I had a pencil protector in high school."

"Yes, but you called your bedroom your 'Fortress of Solitude'. That makes you a geek."

"And that would make you what?"

"Still diligently working my way through that challenging literary classic called 'Green Eggs and Ham'."

"You should just see what that author does in the sequel with foxes and boxes." Charlie retorted sarcastically. He opened my refrigerator, and with a horrified expression, closed it fast. "What is that green stuff?"

"If it's in the crisper, then Dad bought it."

"No, the container in the back of the refrigerator. I think it sneered at me when I opened the door."

"I'm not really sure. It seems to happily co-exist with beer. But I'm not certain it's safe to touch without getting HazMat involved."

"What truly frightens me is Dad truly believes you're a safer cook than I am." Shaking his head in disbelief, Charlie stated dryly, "Has Dad actually ever seen any of the strange alien life growing in your refrigerator?"

"Yeah, but I never lost track of time, left something out to long, and gave us all Salmonella, either."

"That only happened once," he stated with an annoyed expression. Then like a lighting flash, his irritated expression was replaced by a more thoughtful one. "Okay... twice. But you see there was this very interesting problem concerning..."

I head my hand up and interrupted him, "I'm too tired. Besides you should have stayed home with Dad in case he needed anything. I didn't need you to drive me over here."

"Dad will be good and stay on the couch like he promised until we get back. That was our bargain for me driving you over here to get your stuff." Charlie looked me up and down. "He was more worried about you falling asleep behind the wheel and wrapping your car around a tree. A concern I tend to share. Did you know? Statistically speaking more law enforcement officials are hurt and killed in car wrecks caused by sleep derivation than in shoot-outs every year?"

"Don't start."

"Start?" Charlie gave me his best innocent, big-eyed little brother expression. It usually meant he was being sneaky, under-handed, and manipulative. I was about to demand Charlie tell me what he was up to when there was a soft knock at my door.

Turning from Charlie for the moment, I barked out, "Who is it?"

The voice that answered from the other side of the door was the last voice I ever expected to hear.

"Don, we need to talk."

Robin.

Ignoring the small injured part of me that was shrieking 'No we don't', I walked over and opened the door.

Motioning for her to come inside, "So talk."

Robin glanced over in Charlie's direction, "Charlie, maybe you should wait outside."

"He stays," I announced, leaving no room for argument, "You are not forcing my brother to wait outside in the hallway at two in the morning. Charlie, park it. We're not going to be here that long." Charlie, for once, did exactly what I told him and sat down on the couch.

"This deals with the details of an on-going investigation, Agent Eppes."

"Charlie has clearance," I snapped impatiently. "Then ask me if I give a damn. It's late. I'm tired. Now tell me why you're here, Robin, or get the hell out of my apartment."

"We need you and your team to back off the Andrews case a little."

Narrowing my eyes and demanding, "We?"

Robin glared at me, "Yes, 'We'. There's more going on here than you and your team is aware of, Don."

"Your office never screwed up and misfiled our warrant did they?"

"No."

"Did you send my team in to that building knowing that little girl was in there?"

Robin licked her lips nervously, "Our intell informed us there might be a chance she was in there, but nothing concrete. We couldn't risk cluing Andrews in that we had him under surveillance."

I felt my anger bubbling to the surface. It was that icy type of anger that burned in to your soul and formed a nice cold patch of hate there. It was the type of anger I enjoyed. Heck, I even considered it a hobby.

I threw my next words out like stones. "Collateral damage? That's all you saw when you looked at a ten-year old girl potentially caught in the cross fire. And to think you had the nerve to slam out of here calling me broken and disconnected."

"That's completely unfair. Our intell wasn't even sure that little girl was in the building."

"Well, congratulations on a job well done then, Counselor. Your collateral damage convulsed to death from a drug overdose in my arms."

"Her mother will be spending a very long time in jail for what she did."

"You read the same reports I did," I replied coldly. "All the physical evidence points to Andrews helping her mother abuse that little girl."

"We have no way to really prove that. Her mother handed that little girl around like street currency."

I blinked in complete disbelief that Robin would defend this creep. "Your office cut a deal with that slime." It was a statement and not a question. "You had plans to let him turn state's evidence and walk. You did it even knowing what he helped do to that little girl."

"Like I said, there's a lot more going on than you know."

"Was conveniently losing that flash drive part of his deal too?"

She glared at me, "No. Recovering that flash drive is still our number one priority. Let's just say your team's inability to secure crime scene evidence was one contingency we didn't plan for."

"Damn. We must have gotten a little distracted by giving CPR to a dying little girl. It's that whole oath to 'serve and protect' the public thing."

"You know?" Robin announced, crossing her arms over her chest. "I told Meeks bringing you in on this was a bad idea. He also insisted on me being the one to come down here to talk to you because it would draw the least attention. That people would assume it was about me coming over to iron stuff out with an ex-boyfriend since this case was making us work together. Lord knows you sure didn't let the sheets get cold before hoping in to bed with Agent Warner."

"You dumped me. Remember? Who I do and do not take to my bed stopped being any of your concern the moment you walked out my door."

"Enough!" Charlie suddenly roared as he jumped up off the sofa. It was a bellow that had probably woken many a dozing student, and caused both me and Robin to snap our heads in his direction. Then in a much calmer voice, "Robin, I think it might be best if you leave now. Don and I really need to get home to our Dad."

"I really don't care what she does," I said, turning on my heel and heading towards my bedroom. "I need to pack."

Once I was in my bedroom, I took a small gleam of satisfaction of yanking my suitcase out of my closet and throwing it on my bed with more force than was necessary. That's when I caught a glimpse of myself in my dresser mirror. The eyes that looked back at me tonight weren't tough cop eyes, but the eyes of a shell shock victim. I looked fragile and tired. I actually looked beyond worn out. What do you call that? Dead?

Charlie's refection suddenly appeared standing behind me in the mirror. It must have been the lighting because at that moment I clearly saw the brotherly resemblance. His eyes were full of concern. For what seemed like the hundredth time that evening he simply asked, "Are you alright?"

I laughed bitterly, "No."

"Let's get your stuff and go home."


	8. Chapter 8

**Authors Notes:** First I want to point out the "Sydney Opera House" line isn't mine. It's a tribute to an old TV classic called "Fawlty Towers". I didn't want anyone to think I was passing it off as mine. I'm also working off the assumption that Charlie and Don were raised between faiths. Very special thanks to Dawn. Any and all mistakes are mine.

**Warnings:** This part probably should not be read by anyone with a smidgen of decency or one iota of class.

I self-medicate.

I admit it. I repress my emotions in an unhealthy manner. I turn to an outside source for inner-strength and comfort instead of reaching out to others. I use a vice to cope with stress.

Dad glared at me from the couch as I stuck the third piece of Big Red chewing gum in my mouth in little under an hour. "Stop it," he growled, glaring at me. "Because I will not be held responsible for my actions if you snap your gum ONE more time."

There are days, however, where I truly believe taking up Marlboros and liquor might be the way to go.

"Keep it up, and I'm going to roll you off the couch. Open the front door, and let the neighborhood cat gnaw on you."

"I feel so cherished at this moment."

"Only the finest for you, Dad," I replied. "Since I took the day off from work anyway, how about we take one more look at all the nice brochures I brought home from the 'Curl Up and Die' retirement community in Florida. Now eat your oatmeal."

"I hate oatmeal. If you would just let me up off the couch. I could..."

"You're staying on the couch. And you're going to eat your oatmeal. I even made it like mom used to with brown sugar."

"You just want me to eat it so you can force me to take one of those damned pain pills."

"I understand and respect your belief that for a man to truly know himself he must march through his pain and not around it. Please recognize when you're hurting you're a horrible human being. So I'm asserting my right to force you to do it in a medicated state."

"Your ability to so openly empathize with others, Don, just mesmerizes me."

I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and prayed desperately for patience. "I know oatmeal isn't one of your favorites. Eat your breakfast and you won't have to take your pain pill."

My father eyed me distrustfully.

"Have I ever outright lied to you?"

"No. But you are the accredited demon prince of half-truths and forgot-to-mention."

"I'm really too tired to fight with you this morning. Eat your breakfast."

Besides, if Dad ate all his breakfast he wouldn't have to take his morning pain pill. Not with me grinding the sucker up and mixing it in with his oatmeal and all.

Did I forget to mention that?

My bad.

"You look like hell." My father announced matter-of-fact as he took a spoonful of his oatmeal.

"And people wonder where I get my boisterous self-esteem from. It must be the loving, supportive family environment. After all it's where I learned to embrace sarcasm as my primary means of communication."

"Always glad to be of help."

Our warm fuzzy family time was unexpectedly interrupted by a loud pounding at the front door.

"Mr. Eppes, I know you're in there. Since you felt it was necessary to ignore my earlier phone calls. You have left me no choice but to take the matter up with you personally."

Oh man.

There was only one banshee on the planet that could make that ear-bleeding shrill. Mrs. Bates, our next door neighbor and the resident home owners association Nazi. I swear the old mummy had nothing better to do with her life than carry her parasitic, toy poodle Norman around and harass the neighborhood to make sure trash cans and flower beds matched approved color schemes.

My father and I just exchanged a look and rolled our eyes.

Plastering a fake smile on my face, I opened the front door. "Mrs. Bates, it's always a...experience."

"Donald."

"Don."

"Donald, may I please speak to someone that actually resides at this residence? Or have you finally stopped the facade and finally admitted you moved back in?"

You know? Despite the many lectures my father gave me growing up about always taking the high road with people. I still don't feel the least bit remorseful about always aiming for her rose bed with her newspaper when I was ten and had my paper route.

Mrs. Bates looked me up and down like one would study a particularly unpleasant insect, "There was a very nice FBI agent looking for this residence a time ago. She, for some reason, wanted to speak with you. I'm sure it had nothing to do with your very striking resemblance to a FBI wanted poster in the post office."

"I guarantee you, Mrs. Bates, the FBI knows how to locate me. For some reason they seem to feel it's safe to release me on my own recognizance."

"A pity. Goes to show how criminal elements can slip through the system."

Nope. Not feeling sorry about her roses at all.

Clearing his throat loudly my father asked from the couch, "Is there something I can do for you, Mrs. Bates?"

She pushed right past me and in to the house without a second glance.

"Mr. Eppes, what spectacle do you suppose I am forced to gaze upon every time I open my bedroom window?"

Closing the front door, I asked dryly, "Sydney Opera House perhaps? The hanging gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically..."

"Don," My father said pleasantly, the under current of his tone was colored with menace. "Mrs. Bates, I really do not have any idea what you're talking about."

"I'm sure you don't," she replied haughtily. "I'm certain you don't know anything about the disappearance of Mrs. Henderson's cat a few months back either, I assume? Despite various neighbor's eyewitness accounts they saw your youngest son and his odd friend burying a strange container in your back yard in the middle of the night."

I blinked at what she was implying and almost laughed. Mrs. Henderson's cat was a twenty-five pound psychopathic, blood-thirsty, bird slaughtering fiend. We weren't even sure it was feline or some sort of mutant raccoon escaped form a bio-lab and overflowing with human-hating malice. Put Larry and Charlie in full K-9 body armor, arm them both with tennis rackets, pit them up against that monster, and my money would still be on the cat.

My father rolled his eyes at her accusation, "I can assure you Mrs. Bates, Charlie and Larry did not clandestinely bury a cat."

I knew I shouldn't do it. Pay back was going to be excruciating.

"They buried a guy named Darwin," I volunteered cheerfully. My father blasted me with a look that promised he was going to strangle me at his first convenient opportunity. He'd have to catch me first. "The Intelligent Design hearings kind of pushed them over the edge there for a while."

Dad shot Mrs. Bates his most charming smile. "Forgive my oldest son. He can be high strung." Then he turned to me and growled, "or least, at this moment, he should be."

"I'm so feeling the embrace of that loving, supportive family environment." I smiled sweetly at my father.

"Mr. Eppes," Mrs. Bates barked. "May we please get back to the reason I'm here."

"I'm a glow with anticipation," my father uttered dryly.

Ignoring his sarcasm, Mrs. Bates continued, "I realize that it's perfectly acceptable for YOUR people, Mr. Eppes..."

My father's people. In other words: Jewish.

"To mock and blasphemy a Christian holiday with that OFFENSIVE light display..."

"Mrs. Bates," My father interrupted her in mid tirade, "ANYONE would find that display offensive regardless of what faith they are. I'm almost positive it commits blasphemy against all the world's major religions. Well..." My father did a quick glance out the window, "Maybe not the Hindu's."

"The cow in the corner dancing with the drunken reindeer," I informed him, "You can't see it from here."

"I stand corrected."

"Mr. Eppes," Mrs. Bates started again, "Putting aside the palpable religious blasphemy of this dreadful display. That snowman barely qualifies as a lawn ornament. In fact, I cringe at calling it that. It's an eye-sore."

Okay...

I had to give her that.

The Eppes family had had Frosty for a long time. Mom had bought him years before I even could remember. Dad had used him as a floatation device one night when Charlie, at age seven, had flooded the basement when he redirected the rain gutters in to the basement for 'maximum water' storage. The snowman had survived being blasted through my parent's bedroom window when Charlie was ten. Frosty also lived on after being hit by the car during one of my driving lessons.

Frosty looked like something out of a demented fairly tale. He really could frighten little children, or at least commit them to intensive therapy for several years. You swore his eyes could follow you around like some menacing lawn gnome waiting to ax murder you. His face was warped and melted into a permanent sneer. You took one good look at him and all you wanted to do was break out a in to a chorus of:

"There must have been some magic  
In that old silk hat they found  
For when they placed it on his head  
He began to hack people down."

Frosty was a little battle-scarred. He was a little warped.

My eccentric baby brother treasured him anyway.

That fact probably said more about my brother sleeping upstairs than his PhD ever would.

"Mrs. Bates," I announced as I grabbed her and gently marched her towards the door. I wanted her to leave before she woke Charlie up. "I'll be sure to pass your concerns about the light display on to my brother." I opened the front door and put her out on the front door step. "I'd love for you to stay and visit with us longer but my father really needs to finish eating his breakfast before it gets cold. I said "Have a nice day" as an after-thought as I closed the door in her face.

"That woman," my father stated, pointing at the front door. "Is a fine example of how true evil never dies."

Tell me about it.

"Charlie's young." Leaning against the door, I pointed out, "He should out -live her. The odds are in his favor that a house will fall on her some day."

"Are you sure about that?"

"No," I admitted. "Now eat your breakfast."

"I'm not taking my pill."

"I stand by my earlier statement. Eat your oatmeal and you won't have to."

Ah, that warm inner-glow that only comes from family togetherness.

Where did I put my chewing gum?


	9. Chapter 9

**Warnings:** There are some religious references in this chapter.

**Authors Notes:** I'm working off the assumption that Charlie and Don were raised between faiths. I figured all the Terry Pratchett fans out there will catch the "Commander Vimes" reference.

It turned out to be a strange day.

Of course, any day that has your father doped up to his eyeballs because of his broken ankle would be strange. Giggling at Viagra commercials, and yes, I said giggling, from where he lay on the couch with his foot elevated. He educating you on the details of your conception probably qualifies as "peculiar".

Oh yeah, and traumatizing.

All I could do was hug a throw pillow to my chest in horror as my father drunkenly recounted the details of how I was conceived in a pink VW van with "Love" on side, "Peace" on the other and a "Down with the Feds" bumper sticker on the back bumper. Thank God the pain pill kicked in and my father eventually passed out drooling on the couch before he could relay too many disturbing details.

Woo Who.

Let me tell you. No one's going to brag harder to their friends and co-workers about the whole pink van thing than me. Thank goodness the universe always strives for equilibrium and consequently the negative energy vortex that nurtured me was pulled to the middle of those peace-loving 'vibes'.

Charlie emerged from his crypt and came downstairs some time around nine. He was annoyingly perky, scrubbed, clean-shaven, and smelling of Ralph Lauren cologne.

I hate my brother.

Yes, I am that shallow. I admit it. Besides, I had gone my extra mile this morning towards making the world a better place by slipping my bad-tempered father a mickey. I sat through a tale of my parents in love beads. I deserved some guilt free pettiness.

"Nice shirt," I announced as Charlie grabbed a mug and went to pour himself the only three essential food groups in the morning: Coffee, cream and sugar. I recognized the deep, dark, near-black, purple silk shirt he was wearing. It suspiciously looked like mine.

"Hmmm... Well, you see," Charlie responded sheepishly to the look I shot him between sips of coffee, "I'm out of clean shirts. I had to borrow one of yours." My brother took another sip of his coffee and shuffled nervously. He gave me a hopeful look as he threw a tweed blazer on. "Since I've got finals today and I have to go to work. Could you put on load of my laundry?"

Tweed blazer. How... professorish of him. I tried not to visibly cringe. I'm pretty sure my shirt was silently screeching too, having never been exposed to such material before.

I schooled my features in to my best 'dumb' look and replied, "Sure. Dad just got that new washer with all the bells and whistles, right? Don't worry. I'm sure I can figure it out."

Hmmm...How much can you take out in a well placed strategic laundry strike and make it still look like an accident?

"Try to get some rest today. Okay?" Charlie said as he watched me pop a couple of Ibuprofen and wash it down with some coffee. He must have noticed my neck was stiff today. "Translucent is not a good look on you."

I grunted. As Charlie was reaching for his keys, I grumbled at him, "Hey, what about breakfast?"

Charlie's only response was to wave a silver foiled package of Pop Tarts in my direction as he ran out the door.

I rolled my eyes.

There are days I swear that if you cut my brother he'd bleed strawberry Pop Tart filling.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

After Charlie left, I called the office.

"You know, Commander Vimes," Megan's exasperated voice grumbled from the other side of the line, "When normal people take a day off, they do just that—take the day off."

"If I'm Vimes? That makes you what? A werewolf, dwarf, or troll?"

"A troll. A man eating one. You take too many days off I'm chopping up and stewing Granger."

Chuckling under my breath at that image, "Nice to know you are two playing nice together."

"Granger started it. How's your dad? I'm guessing, cranky?"

"That's putting it mildly."

"Before you ask, Don. We've made no head way at finding that flash drive. Oh, Granger wants me to send you his gratitude for making him the agent in charge of monitoring that Andrews didn't swallow the thing. He wanted me to thank you for introducing him to a whole new level of crap."

"Tell him payback is a bitch. And after e-mailing pictures of our Christmas light display to the entire office, he should feel lucky I don't assign him to customs indefinitely so he can get to intimately know the ins and outs muling and the glass toilet."

I heard Megan chuckle under her breath, "I am truly understanding why the rookies are terrified of you, Bossman."

I heard Granger shout in the background, "Tell Don I don't care. It was worth it."

Megan's voice suddenly became very serious. "Don, what's your gut feeling about Meeks?"

I thought about it for a moment, "Tenacious and very, very practical. I wouldn't want to be the bad guy he has his sights set for. Why?"

When you operate that way yourself, you tend to spot it in other people.

"That's my impression of him too," Megan said, "So why isn't he being is usual nice predictable pit-bull self and jumping all over the Andrews case? It's not making sense to me."

"Robin stopped by my place last night. I was informed that recovering the flash drive and not nailing Andrews should be our number one priority."

"Interesting." I could almost picture Megan's face as she considered those words. "That only leaves us to wonder who Meeks is really gunning for and why is he trying to be so discrete about it."

"He might be party to information about undercover operatives that we aren't."

"Maybe."

Taking a deep breath, "Since I'm off today, I'm going to make some calls to charitable organizations and see about possibly getting that little girl a tombstone?"

"Don, don't do this. Don't make this case personal."

Too late.

It was personal from the moment I held that little girl in my arms.

I remember Larry Fleinhardt told me the day we buried my mom how everything is born from the stars and everything ultimately returns to them. Nothing ever truly dies. Cycle of the universe, he had explained. People, planets, galaxies, doesn't matter, in the end we all go back to the same celestial fire that forged us all to begin with.

I liked that thought. That even after we die we leave a little bit of light behind.

I'd like to think wherever she is now; Mom would have liked it, too.

I sighed, "Megan, you may not understand this, but I was raised believing names are what give us our identity. I've seen too many human beings rendered down to nameless case numbers. The system failed that kid. I just can't leave her a cold unnamed file." I know my next words were going to make me sound like a crazy, border-line, burn-out case. "I don't really care what they say about us keeping our distance on cases. Sometimes it's about doing the right thing."

Megan was strangely quiet for a moment considering those words. When she finally spoke all she said was, "I'll ask around and see if I can get any names you can contact on our end."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Charlie lives in his head.

It's one of the fundamental differences between us. It's one reason why we just don't 'get' each other at times. It was something only my mother truly understood about him. Charlie's world is a dreamy one full of numbers, and impressions of whatever has caught his imagination at any given moment. It's his gift and his curse. It makes him brilliant but gives him the capability to lose himself in a world of his own making.

I live in a very concrete, physical world. I'm firmly rooted in my five senses. For me, the world is all about sensory inputs, body memory, and instinct. I live in my body. Charlie can't explain some formless math concept that's floating around in his head to me anymore than I can explain to him how I know I'm being watched or walking in to a trap because the back of my neck is tingling.

It was that same in-born sixth sense that told me that it was going to rain tonight. I could just tell by the feel of how atmosphere danced across my skin. I closed my eyes and let that primal glimmer in the atmosphere wrap around me for a moment. There wasn't a cloud in that sky and the weatherman only gave it a slim chance of rain on the news. It didn't matter. I knew without a doubt it was going to be raining before the sun rose tomorrow. It made me edgy and restless. Like someone plugged me in to a live circuit.

If I didn't know better, I would have sworn I was in the first stages of a migraine. The only thing was my symptoms weren't matching up. I usually had a fairly predictable set of 'warning lights' when it came to my headaches. For one thing I wasn't desperately craving sweet. That was my usual tip off one of my migraines was coming on and to try to take steps to abort the sucker.

I took a couple more Ibuprofen just to be one the safe side.

Better safe than sorry.

Trying to be as quiet as possible not to wake my father sleeping on couch, I threw in a load of Charlie's laundry. I silently saluted the washing machine and all the tweed and other nerd-ware about to die this day.

Gap, here we come.

Amita could thank me later.

After putting the laundry on, I made a couple of calls and put some feelers out about getting that little girl a tombstone, and possibly a legal name to put on it. I was calling in personal favors I probably should have saved. Screw it. Like I told Megan, sometimes it's about doing the right thing.

It wasn't very long before I was drifting to the Nativity scene Charlie had out on the table. My family had never been religious but the Nativity scene was one thing my mother had always insisted be displayed right next to our Chanukah Menorah. That reminded me that I needed to talk to Dad about the Menorah before I brought it over for Charlie.

I was not looking forward to that conversation.

I picked up Joseph figurine for a moment and studied him. It was something I didn't understand, the odd silence regarding Joseph's story. He took a boy in that wasn't his own and raised him like his son. Protected the child and his mother, and later taught the boy a trade. Yet, Joseph's hardly mentioned, even in Christmas carols.

It seemed very odd to me.

Someday I was going to have to ask David, who was the most religious of us, about that.

I looked up and my eyes met a dark set of very angry orbs.

I smiled at my father and asked, "How about some lunch?"

"You drugged me. We're ordering out."

It was going to be a very long day.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

By the time Charlie drifted back in, I was happily dreaming of duct taping my father to the couch. My head was really starting to throb. What part of "Leg up and elevated" did the man NOT understand?

Apparently all of it.

I humbly voiced my duct tape suggestion to Charlie when he walked in the door and being the good son he is, he shot it down.

Kiss-up.

Apparently Charlie had a bad day because it didn't take to long after he walked in for us to start arguing with my father having to step in to break us up.

"Are we having fun yet?" Charlie whined without bothering to lift his head from the table.

"Most fun that's allowed without being forced to cuddle afterwards," I replied sarcastically from my seat across the table.

"Now boys," my father chirped out cheerfully. "This family time together will be fun. Who needs TV?"

"For the record, I am thirty-one years old and I own this house. You can not take away my television privileges."

My father glared at Charlie and informed him, "Yes, I can. The TV is mine."

I snickered, "He's got you there, Bro."

"Don and I were NOT fighting over the TV," Charlie muttered, "Just negotiating at the top of our lungs."

"Yes, we like to think of our voices as having presence. We're watching Sponge Bob"

"Discovery Channel."

"ESPN."

"PBS."

"You are such an intellectual snob."

"Boys!"

"Keep telling yourself this will be fun, Dad," Charlie said, lifting his head from the table. "Just like I'll start suddenly teaching spelling and grammar. Don will suddenly go back to school for his doctorate in physics. Then we all will meet right back here at..."

"A quarter-past never?" I said with a smile.

"Precisely."

Ignoring me and my brother, my father asked, "So, Donnie, what do you want for Christmas?"

"Gift Cards."

My father and brother exchanged a look across the table and rolled their eyes.

"Fine," I said annoyed. "Eva Longoria AND gift cards. Happy?"

"How about a set of salad bowls that don't have the words 'Cool Whip' on the sides," my brother suggested smugly.

Giving Charlie a you're-so-pushing-it look, I retorted, "I like to think my bowls as eco-friendly, dishwasher safe, and come with free complimentary lids. And what is wrong with wanting gift cards?"

Charlie replied, "You do realize normal people don't take the same gift cards they were given as Christmas presents to do their Christmas shopping for the upcoming year in February, right?"

"I'm frugal."

"You're cheap," Charlie said matter-of-fact. "You squabbled over the bill at an IHOP all-you-can-eat buffet."

"They didn't give us the special price."

"Boys!" my father roared. Turning to Charlie calmly, he asked, "So how did your finals go?"

"I hate my freshman class." Charlie gestured exasperated in my direction, "They are a classroom of...of...Dons."

"Still working through that whole counting thing on Sesame Street, huh?" I asked innocently.

"No, but they do seem to have the lyrics for the Cookie Monster Song memorized. They were singing "C is for Cookie and that's good enough for me" as they were turning in their finals today."

"I know just the thing to make you feel better," my father announced, reaching for his crutches.

"Leg up!" Charlie and I both barked simultaneously.

Then I added in alone, "Don't make us say it again."

My father shot us both an irritated look, "I've done nothing but sit on the sofa and do nothing all day."

"And that's exactly what you're going to keep doing for the next six days," Charlie informed him. "You keep this up. I'm going to pull out the duct tape. Then I'm going to let Don play redneck and show us what type of in-field improvising he's learned to do with it. We'll worry about getting the tape off the couch later."

"You two wouldn't dare."

"Color me barefoot, pregnant and swigging Jim Bean," I rang out cheerfully.

Charlie studied me for a moment, "You know, Don? Ghoul white really isn't a good look on you."

I sighed and pinched my nose. With my head starting to ache really badly, I so did not need this.

Sensing alliances were starting to shift in his direction, my father threw out at me, "I told you. You look like hell, Donnie."

This was the reason I hate my family at times. We three weren't so much a unified family unit. More like loose confederation of warring city states. Alliances could shift so quickly, you never knew when you were going to land on the losing side of any family dispute.

"I'm fine."

Charlie and my father exchanged a look.

"Well," Charlie said as he got up from his seat at the table. "I need some Chunky-Monkey after the day I've had." He glared at my father, "And since someone and his girlfriend ate the last of mine without bothering to replace it. I'm going for an ice-cream run."

"Bring an umbrella with you," I said absently "It's going to rain tonight."

Charlie and my father traded another look.

"What?" I demanded.

"Nothing," Charlie replied. "You are always much more accurate than the weatherman."

"Swing by the drug store, will you?" my father asked Charlie, ignoring me. "I need a prescription I called in picked up."

"I know. I'm on it," Charlie reached for his keys. "I should have guessed with him eating tuna at the hospital last night."

My father raised an eyebrow at that revelation.

I scowled at both of them.

"We need anything else while I'm out?" Charlie threw out over his shoulder as he walked out the door.

"Ginger Ale and saltines," my father shouted back. Looking me up and down, he then muttered, "We're going to need them."

I glared at my father, "I told you. I'm fine."

"You're in the early stage of a migraine." My father looked me up and down again, "A bad one. You might not be able to tell, but we can."

I rubbed my head. "It's a headache but not a migraine." I glared at my father. "I wonder where I could have gotten it from? Besides I haven't been craving sweet. It's not following my typical pattern."

"That worries me even more," my father replied. "You really need to go see a specialist."

"I already did and I'm not going to back to him. We had a disagreement over my treatment course."

"You told him where to stuff it and how."

"Something like that."

"Don..."

"Dad. Drop it."

"Fine. You want to tell me why you were on the phone this morning? I overheard from the couch." Looking me straight in the eyes, "Was it about the little girl that died in your arms that other night? Charlie told me about it."

"Charlie has a big mouth. That's all part of an on-going investigation. So, no. I don't want to talk about it."

"You're brother is worried about you."

"_Yad Vashem._ That's why I was on the phone today." I sighed. I was suddenly too tired and my head was aching too much to fight anymore tonight. My father would understand the concept and Hebrew words for "a hand and a name". He taught them to me.

"'I will give them in my house and in my walls a monument, a hand and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an ever lasting name that shall never be effaced,'" my father said softly, "Isaiah 56:5"

"Exactly," I whispered sadly. "A person should be more than a number. A victim should always have a name. I'm going to bed."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The weather soon broke, and rain started gently falling on the roof of the old Craftsman house. I was wakened by a pounding on one side of my head so fierce it felt like someone was standing on my face, beating one side of my head in with a sledge hammer. My nose was running. I was shivering and couldn't get warm.

I must have whimpered out loud because I heard someone speak softly, "Ssshhh, it's okay. I need you to take this for me."

I tried to respond by moving but one side of me wasn't responding very well and it only made my head hurt worse.

I felt something dissolve on my tongue and that voice murmured, "That's it. Now just lie still."

"Dad?" I slurred out.

"Yeah, Donnie, it's me," he said very tenderly. "Now lay still and let your medicine work." I felt him gently pull the blankets up a little tighter around me. He knew from experience I'd be hypersensitive and not to touch me too much.

A while later I heard Dad's voice again and something told me he wasn't talking to me.

""The time has come," the Walrus said,  
"To talk of many things:  
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax,

Of cabbages and kings..."

I miss you, Margaret," he whispered. "Because, I'll be damned if, I know how."


	10. Chapter 10

I awoke to my cell phone ringing.

I just huddled deeper in to my blankets and tried to pretend not to hear the damned thing. I felt like crap. Something digested, dumped on the side of the road, and run over by a couple of cars would pretty much cover it. My head had settled down to a dull, bearable ache. Half of me was still kind of numb and tingling all over.

I was going to live.

Yippee-skippy for me.

I was so tired. I didn't want to move. I was nested in my comfortable cocoon of blankets, and it was a rare treat for me. Lounging around in bed wasn't usually an indulgence I ever allowed myself. So I just buried myself a little deeper in the covers and told that ultra-responsible little voice in the back of my mind, which insisted I should answer the phone, to go to hell.

I didn't become completely aware until I heard someone's voice whisper softly, "He's sleeping right now. I'd rather not wake him." Charlie voice, some semi-aware part of my mind put a name to the voice. What was Charlie doing in my apartment?

It took me three tries to get my eyes open. My eyelids felt like two half-ton cement blocks at the moment. I answered my own questions when my eyes opened and everything came back to me. Struggling to sit up and only managing to tangle myself up in the blankets. I croaked out, "I'm awake".

Charlie ignored me, and politely replied to whoever was on the other end of my phone, "I'd be happy to take a message and give it to him when he's feeling better."

I glared at my brother.

Charlie shot me that patronizing stop-being-an-idiot look that reminded me of my father. It was that same expression my Dad tended to shoot over his reading glasses when he thought Charlie or I were being particularly dense about something. Charlie was the only one of the two of us that could really pull it off well. The ability to give that condescending gaze tended to go with inheriting the rather sharp patrician nose from the Eppes' side of the family.

"I'll be sure to pass the message on," Charlie said as he stepped out of range of my feeble attempts to reach for the phone.

Crap. Half of me still was not functioning correctly.

He closed my phone, hooked it to his belt, and looked down at me tangled up in the blankets. "I don't suppose you would actually ever ask for help?", he asked dryly raising any eyebrow.

Giving him a look that promised I was going to kick his ass for this later, I replied, "No."

I hate this.

I hate being dependent.

It was the biggest reason I hated my migraines. I hate how out of control they made me feel. I'm an athlete. I'm used to pushing my body to its limits and just a little beyond. My whole life has been about winning that contest. Except with my migraines, I've never manage to pull a win with them. Some times, I wondered if it was some higher power's way of keeping me humble, similar to how the numbers took over Charlie's brain at times.

Other times, I know repression is hell. I've buried so much bad crap, so deep, for so long, just to keep functioning day to day. To be honest, I wasn't even sure I even could feel any more. There is so much thick scar tissue covering my soul these days, that maybe my migraines were a way of breaking through that thick protective skin. My means of turning myself inside out, puking up the repressed stuff up, and taking a good revolting look at what's buried inside by the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights.

Suddenly the very slight scent of aftershave on the blankets rolled over me like a tidal wave. One of the side effects of my migraines episodes was my sense of smell could become very acute for a while. The faintest smells could simply be over powering. I needed up out of this bed right now or I was going to be sick.

Charlie managed to catch me before my struggles with the blankets sent me crashing on to the floor. "Are you going to be sick again?" he questioned gently.

Trying not to flinch from where he touched me, "Aftershave. On the blankets. I can smell it."

I was abruptly pulled in to my brother's comforting warmth and pair of very competent hands was quickly untangling me and pulling the blankets away. "Better?" he asked softly.

I nodded and was pulled closer into that warmth until I was surrounded by the scent that was uniquely Charlie. My brother always seemed to carry the scent of spicy, hot coffee and leather bound books with him.

He rubbed my back soothingly, "Dad must have forgotten. He hasn't worn anything in years because..."

_Any strong scents made mom nauseous during her chemo treatments._

I finished for him silently when Charlie stopped in mid-sentence.

"Anyway," he cleared his throat, "I'll remind Dad when he wakes up. He just started wearing aftershave again since he and Millie started dating."

Deciding that it was time to change the topic, I pushed myself away from my brother's embrace and asked, "Who was on the phone?"

"I don't suppose there's any possibility you will actually do what's best for you for a change and simply let it go for right now?"

"No."

"What if I promise I'll give you the message when you feeling a little better?"

Let me think about it.

"No"

Charlie rolled his eyes in exasperation at me. "It was David. He wanted you to know that Andrews was released on bail today."

I sighed.

Let's hear it for that stunning win for the good guys.

I took a deep breath, "Help me up".

"Don."

"I need a shower."

"Don."

"I reek. Either help me up, or I'm crawling there."

Charlie got up and offered me a hand, "How is it every time I think I've actually won an argument with you, you suddenly manage to get a second wind and then beat the crap out of me with it?"

I threw my arm around his offered shoulder and replied, "It's my charm. You're too much of an egomaniac to realize you should never argue with an idiot. We drag you down to our level and beat you with experience every time."

Charlie grunted as my right leg went out from under me and he took a little more of my weight, "I'm the good looks and brains, and you're the bravado and firepower?"

"Yup."

"You know, Don? People are going to start suspecting that you not only know how to spell the big words but you have some vague clue on how to actually apply them, too."

"See what I mean about you arguing with an idiot? The deepest questions I think about are who lives in a pineapple under the sea and why can't the Dodgers win one when I go see a game."

Charlie turned the knob on the bathroom door. "Not buying it. You countered your own arguments by applying the big word 'egomaniac' in the correct context."

"I blame the big word usage on growing up with you," I retorted. "Geekdom is like a communicable disease. Once you've got it, you try to pass it on to unsuspecting people."

"Remind me again why I didn't let you crawl to the shower?"

"Because you're hoping I don't hurt you too badly for giving Dad the idea of putting me on the internet meat market with the help of his on-line 'support group'."

Charlie gave me his best big-eyed, 'who-me' little brother look, "He was looking into insights on supporting a family member in law enforcement. I just merely suggested that on-line might be a place for him to better acquire those insights. Besides, Mary's daughter Beth sounds very nice. I hear she's FBI, too."

"Just wait, Machiavelli. Yours is coming."

"Oww... Machiavelli. Another big word applied in context. Did you learn that one from watching SpongeBob, too?

"No, my 'Batman' comic books. And keep it up."

He sat me down on the edge of the tub and then gave me a serious look. "I'm going to go get you a change of clothes. You're staying put until I get back. You will not try to get in to that shower by yourself."

"Fine."

I could tell by the underlying of steel in Charlie's voice that fighting with him over this would get me no where. Besides I'm stubborn, not stupid. I knew trying to climb in to the shower by myself right now was probably not a smart idea, not with my right side still tingling and my leg still going out from under me.

"I mean it, Don. You're too unsteady on your feet right now. Promise me."

"I promise, Buddy."

That answer seemed to satisfy Charlie because he hurried off to go get that change of clothes for me.

It's startling how memories can just assault you at times. They can jump out of no where like a mugger hiding in the shadows. It's like a sucker punch out of no where. It's incredible what little things can fire up those hateful little synapses too.

Like the seemingly innocent sight of handrails in a shower.

I remember how mom cried the first time she saw them there. I could only hold her close as she sobbed about how she had always been so strong. How she had been the one that always took care of the three of us. Despite how hard I tried, I couldn't find the words to soothe her as she wept over what a burden she thought she had become.

What kind of person can't find the words to comfort his own dying mother?

A person Robin was right about being broken and disconnected.

That thought made me angry. I liked angry. It pushed back the gagging regret. I'd be damned if Robin was going to get any tears out of me. Kim Hall had ripped out the last tears I had left. Along with any last part of me that had truly believed in that true love and 'they lived happily ever after' crap. My whole life had been about people putting me aside for reasons I couldn't change.

Screw them all.

I was worn-out from trying to prove myself to people. Tried of trying to be things to people I couldn't be. I liked being broken. I liked being detached. I liked holding a little part of my heart back from everyone. My heart and soul were mine. Damn it. No one else was going to get a free shot at completely blowing them apart ever again.

Anyone that had a problem with that could go straight to Hell.

There were plenty of people that liked me for me.

Someday, I just might be one of them.

"Hey." Charlie unexpectedly materialized in the bathroom doorway, "While I was digging around for your clothes, I found some unscented soap."

I shot him an appreciative smile. A smile that I know didn't reach my eyes, and I muttered, "thanks".

Charlie studied me for a moment, "Are you still sure you want to do this? It can wait until your feeling a little better."

"Yeah," I sighed, "I stink. Let's do this before I lose my nerve."

My brother suddenly looked very sad, "You'll never lose your nerve, Don. Your life? Maybe. But never your nerve."

It was nice to know one of us thought so.

He looked me over again, "Depression is a very common after-effect of a migraine."

"I know, especially mine."

"Is it the migraines?" he asked me quietly, "Or do they simply bring to the surface what's already buried there, Don?"

I honestly didn't know the answer to that question.

I held out my hand. "Help me up."


	11. Chapter 11

The Shower helped.

I still felt lousy but I was feeling human again. My sense of smell was still acting funky. I was also moodier, and grumpier than normal. On the bright side, the right half of me was taking commands again. That trumped all the other stuff.

I was sitting on the couch watching, something. I really wasn't sure what the television program was or what it was about. One of the joys of coming down off one of my bad migraine sometimes was my attention span got blown down to milliseconds. It's similar to having your brain going on the fritz and having this constant static white noise floating through it. Almost like walking around in this flashing strobe light and leaving pieces of you everywhere.

"What am I watching?" I asked, as what looked like some form of furry rodent scampered across the screen. I was baffled. I didn't even remember turning on the television.

"A program on Rattus Rattus, the common black rat," Charlie said, not bothering to look up from the paper he was grading in the seat next to me. "You said something about looking for Mickey the mutant mouse's digs. And that's the third time you asked what this program is."

This was the reason I hated taking Imitrex. I was never sure which was worse, coming down off the migraine or coming down off the delightful medicines used to treat them. I honestly think the medicines are worse. They tend to leave you brain dead and hung over like after a night of doing straight tequila shots.

"It is?"

"Yup."

I take it back.

My brain actually works better after a night of being poisoned with tequila.

I appreciated the patience Charlie was showing. I really did. I don't know if our positions had been reversed that I would have showed half the self restraint he did. If I was honest with myself the answer would be, probably not. Especially when my leg went out from under me in the shower and I had to catch myself with the hand rails to keep from breaking my neck.

Then again, Charlie always had his thoughtful, supportive moments.

When you go armed, there are rules you live by. One is you always make a gun safe. You either keep a gun unloaded and locked up, or you keep it physically on you where you can control it. Depart from those rules and that's how tragedies happen. I had always tried to respect my father's wishes of no guns in his house. That meant when I stayed over here, my gun stayed unloaded, secured with a gun lock, in the glove compartment of my truck with the vehicle's doors locked.

The thing is I'm paranoid. I don't trust kids. Kids are the most creative, resourceful little creatures at getting into places they have no business. Throw a police light on the front dash of a SUV and some interesting police gear in the cargo area, it's a neighborhood kid magnet. I had never been comfortable leaving my gun locked out in my truck unattended overnight. Then soon after Charlie bought this house, the gun lock box had shown up on the top shelf of the coat closet. The key to the box had appeared with no fanfare on my key chain, too. That had been my biggest signal of the changing of the guard.

Yeah, my brother had his moments.

They've kept me from reaching across the table to throttle him more than once.

My cell phone snapped me out of my thoughts. That's when I realized the program I had been watching was long over. Shooting a quick look at the stack of papers Charlie had managed to go through and grade, I must have been zoning out in my own little world for a while.

Crap.

How does Charlie actually live with a brain that always functions like this?

I flipped open the phone and said, "Eppes".

"Agent Eppes?" an unfamiliar voice asked hesitantly.

"Yes".

"My name is Rabbi Miller. Agent Gales gave me your number. I understand you're looking to secure donations for a tombstone for a young child abuse victim?"

Mike Gales was the Senior Agent in Charge of our office's Hate Crimes Division. He was an inch shorter than me but built broader. He was also one of the few men in the office I didn't have to step back to look square in the eye. Gales was a bloodthirsty, nasty, SOB that hated losing to the bad guys on general principle. Being all of those not-so-nice things myself, Gales and I understood one another perfectly. We had come to our enlightened understanding in one of those warm, fuzzy, beat-the crap-out-of-each-other testosterone bonding moments.

It had been the start of a beautiful friendship.

"Yes, I am, Rabbi," I replied.

"Our synagogue maybe interested in donating. Are you free tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"I realize its very short notice, Agent Eppes. Ms. Katz, the head of our board of directors, would like to meet with you before we commit ourselves to a donation. She's in her seventies and doesn't get out much. She's at the synagogue on other business tonight. I thought it might be easier for both of you. If tonight is not convenient, I understand."

I really didn't want to do this. I shouldn't do this. I still felt like crap. I really didn't want to go out. I couldn't even drive myself there. Agreeing to meet tonight would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, even for me.

I was going to do it anyway.

It was a feeling, the spark of something pulling me there tonight. The flash of it danced across my skin and made the back of my neck crawl. It was nothing I could explain rationally, but my intuition was shouting at me I needed to go. I trusted my instincts. They had saved my life too many times.

Besides, the good guys are supposed to do incredibly stupid, self-sacrificing things.

It's a rule somewhere.

"Can you give me at least an hour to get down there, Rabbi?"

"That would be perfect. It would give us some time to wrap some things up. I'll inform Ms. Katz that you are able to make it tonight. Let me give you our address."

I got up and grabbed a pen and paper. I wrote the address he gave me down, repeating it back to him to make sure I got it right. I had a pretty good idea what part of town the synagogue was in and wasn't too worried about being able to find the place. I ended the call and hung up with, "I'll see you an in hour."

"Are you completely out of your mind?" Charlie asked quietly. "You're barely on your feet. What possible difference will meeting with them tonight instead tomorrow accomplish?"

"I need to do this."

"Why?"

"Because that little girl was mine," I stated matter-of-fact.

My responsibly. My duty. My failure.

Charlie sighed. I think he saw on my face there was no way he was going to stop me, even if he tried. "Go change. I'll grab your keys."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

I changed in to something 'friendly'.

Standard Fed issue black pants and white shirt.

Hey, for me that's friendly.

Merrick had been getting on me lately about my wardrobe. Supposedly I am dressing like "GQ meets assassin chic". I swear. The man had serious issues with you wearing black. He had informed me that my clothing was "setting a bad example" for the office and was "intimidating". Merrick had then gone on to "suggest" I go for a little less hostile look for office attire and maybe try adding some color.

I added red.

My boss had not been amused.

Some people are never happy.

Looking out the passenger window, I focused my attention at watching the scenery fly by. It was times like this I missed New Mexico. I missed its pulsating colors and extremes. I missed its mesas painted in vibrant reds, oranges, and purples. You could lie under the stars out there and almost feel the pulse of the planet under you. Close your eyes and you could almost hear the echo of the ancient persons who came before, their feet dancing to that steady primitive beat as you felt the rhythm of life hum through you.

Goes to show how morose I'm being tonight because I don't usually let myself think about New Mexico. Much less let myself miss it. Thinking about New Mexico opens up the way to start wandering down more depressing avenues of regrets like Kim.

Crap happens. Life goes on. You accept it.

Our planet is going to keep spinning. And boy, did I ever resent that fact once. But these days, I try to keep my outlook on life as uncomplicated as possible. At times, I think I'm cynical. Others, just tired. But I find the fact the earth keeps turning in spite of all the bad stuff rather comforting. If the world stopped for every little person on this planet that had a rotten day, we'd all be waving 'Hi' to Larry in space.

"Penny for your thoughts," Charlie said from the driver's seat.

"I'd owe you change."

"I was thinking...," Charlie started.

"When aren't you," I grumbled.

Geesh. That sounded pissy, even for me.

Either Charlie knew I still wasn't feeling great or he was in a very forgiving mood tonight. He ignored my snarky comment and continued, "That you should stay at the house with Dad and me through the holidays. We could stop at your place on the way home and pick up some more of your clothes." Charlie shot me a hopeful look. "I'd like to actually see my brother during holidays."

The holidays suck.

Ask anyone in law enforcement. The hours are long. You're usually working double shifts. People let their guard down around the holidays and the criminal element takes full advantage. Pull 'loved' ones together and it can boil down to volatile, bloody mixtures and crime scenes. Don't even get me started on squabbling parents that can't suck it up for the good of their children. I didn't even want to think of the number of kidnapping cases that will cross my desk because one parent decided to give their finger to a custody agreement, take the kids, and run.

Oh yes, I could feel the warm glow of the holidays now.

I wholehearted agreed with the Grinch about hating "The whole Christmas season".

"Don," Charlie took a deep breath and began in that blurring, mile-a-minute tone that made my head spin. "Let's face it, you're most likely going to be crashing at our place anyway thanks to the double shifts. This way, your stuff is already over at the house. It will save you a trip over to your place to change in the morning. Not to mention give you an extra hour of sleep. Dad will get his required hovering and nagging time in. We'll actually get to see you. Everyone wins."

I just shook my head trying to follow that. Gotta love my brother. When he expects a fight, he usually just talks so fast you have no idea what the hell he's saying. It's his way of cornering you in to agreeing to something without actually knowing what you just agreed too. Charlie was playing dirty tonight. I had way too few functioning brains cells to actually try to translate, much less argue.

"Don't think for a minute I'm doing your laundry," I grumble. I knew I had lost already but I just couldn't throw in the towel with no fight. "I'm going to hog the TV, get on your last nerve, and drink out of the juice container."

"How is this different from usual?" Charlie gloated sweetly. He knew he won this one.

"One condition, tell me why? Why all this?" I gestured with my hands hoping he'd understand.

I just couldn't put my finger on when this side of my brother started coming out. I really couldn't. It was bugging me. I think it started some time around the Yates case, but I wasn't sure. A feeling told me there was a little more to all of this than my close call with a syringe full of morphine.

"I don't suppose you'd just accept the answer, 'Because you're my brother'?"

"No."

The silence echoed on for a few minutes.

Then Charlie said quietly, "Because I found out the hard way. The people that walk in when others walk out, like you did, or ride with you to the bottom, like Larry. Those people are worth your time and the effort in this life. They'll be the ones always hopping on when the bandwagon ends. Mom's cancer taught me that. I had fame. I was the toast of the academic world. Everyone wanted to be the 'young Einstein's' friend. And guess what? None of it meant anything when mom got sick." He shot me a bitter smile. "That's not the answer you were expecting, huh?"

"No."

"You asked," he stated with a shrug as we turned on to the street of our destination. "Are you up to walking?"

I nodded.

There must have been some sort of function going on. We ended up parking at the bottom of the hill looking up at the synagogue. I got out of my truck and snickered. I just could not believe what I saw, although my twisted sense of humor could appreciate it.

There was a yellow brick road leading up to the synagogue.

It seems I had made an appointment to meet the wizard tonight.

Charlie must have been reading my mind. He smirked at the yellow path stretched out in front of us and said, "After you, Dorothy".


	12. Chapter 12

Additional Warnings: This chapter contains religious references. It also contains references to The Holocaust.

Notes: The quote by Elie Wiesel is from his novel "Night" and is used without permission. No profit is being made.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

We started up the yellow brick road in silence.

The dark caressed my skin like icy, inky water. My grandmother Eppes would have said ill tidings were riding the winds tonight. The whole feel of the night had me on edge. The shadows that surrounded me reminded me of those unnaturally calm moments right before a bad storm broke. Like fate had rolled her dice and the pieces were about to start falling.

I chastised myself for being ridiculous. It wasn't cold. In fact, the night was unseasonably warm for this time of year. The wintry feeling was probably a lovely bi-product of the migraine remnants still playing havoc with my ability to maintain my internal temperature. Like the repugnant, gagging smell of smoke that I could smell on the breeze, even though there were no smokers nearby.

Olfactory hallucinations, got to love them.

There were small white lights set into the path, which was bordered by an array of different kinds of white flowers. The artificial light seemed to ignite them from within and gave them an almost eerie, surreal glow. White is symbolically the color of purity, and a soul on a journey. The imagery might be lost on a casual passerby but it certainly wasn't on me. Then again, maybe I was irritable because I was wearing a white shirt and it matched the pristine landscaping.

I knew I should have worn the blue shirt.

Blue is a nice 'friendly', non-threatening color.

Reaching the top of the hill, l I took a good look around. There were two simple gold brick buildings with a small courtyard between them. The east building must have been the synagogue itself. The Sanctuary, the place where prayer services are performed, always faced towards the direction of Jerusalem. This was because some prayers require the worshiper to be facing the ancient city when reciting them. The west building was probably some sort of social hall.

I sighed in relief. The place the Rabbi directed us to meet him at wasn't the synagogue but the other building. That meant we wouldn't be going into the Sanctuary. No need to wear a yarmulke or other head covering. My brother had been nothing but supportive and understanding tonight, but I didn't want to push my luck, either.

Religion had been the topic of more than one knock-out fight between us through the years. Charlie was an Atheist. His tolerance had his limits and the topic of religion tended to push him to them fast. I wasn't sure if he would baulk at covering his head to show respect to a God he didn't believe in, guest here or not.

Me? I was the very opposite. I believed in God. There were days I just wasn't too sure if he believed in me anymore. I needed to think there was some type of divine order to the universe. Some power with a plan and a really good reason for the suffering I saw every day. I'm not a churchgoer, but if I can pray to God when someone's pointing a gun at my head, I can admit I believe in him the rest of the time.

This synagogue was very simple, warm, and down to earth.

There was nothing flashy or ornate about this place.

I liked that.

Well, except for the decorated Chanukah tree. It was lit up with white lights in the middle of the courtyard. The tree pretty much told me this wasn't one of the more traditional Conservative sects of Judaism but a Reformer synagogue. My Conservative Jewish grandmother would be spinning in her grave at the sight of that tree.

Some people are under the impression that Chanukah is the equivalent of a Jewish Christmas. It's really not. In fact Chanukah isn't even traditionally considered one of the Jewish high holidays. The Festival of Lights was a very low key celebration around the Eppes household. I think it was the reason why it fit in with my mother's Christmas celebration so well. My father always embraced the more traditional observance of celebration. No elaborate decorations or gift giving. No Chanukah tree. Dad would make it a point to be home before dark. The math tutors got thrown out. No work. No sports. No numbers. None of that was allowed.

For eight nights a year we spent our evening doing what typical families do. We lit the candles. My mom would fry up Latkes and her bake her Christmas cookies. We spun the dreidel for chocolate covered coins and M&M's, and played until one person won everything. Then the winner would be forced to redivide the pot afterward, because to quote my Dad, "everyone appreciates a generous winner".

I treasure those memories.

I loved those nights. I still remember crawling in to my father's lap when I was little and feeling safe and cherished. I hold tight those rare precious family moments like some people might treasure an old heirloom quilt. I pull those memories out and wrap them around me on the nights my soul needs warmed.

"Agent Eppes?" A voice called pulling me back to the here and now.

That's when I noticed there was a man walking towards us. If this was Rabbi Miller, he was young for a Rabbi, about Charlie's age. He was close to six feet, his hair was a honey colored mop and his eyes were a bright sky blue. He felt like summer. He gave off a warm summer day feeling. The only other person I knew that broadcasted that earthly, nurturing vibe so openly was my Dad.

I nodded. "Rabbi Miller?"

His smile was wide, friendly and lit up his eyes. "Indeed." He took a moment and blew a stubborn curl out of his eyes, before holding out his hand to me. "It's nice to meet you."

I accepted the offered hand. It was firm and warm. "Same here," I turned to Charlie, "Rabbi Miller, this is my brother Dr. Charles Eppes."

Charlie shook the Rabbi's hand and muttered, "Nice to meet you."

Rabbi Miller smiled at us again. "Please follow me. We shouldn't keep Ms. Katz waiting."

Following the Rabbi, we were led inside in to a large library.

Charlie let out a whistle under his breath as we walked in. "Impressive".

Charlie wasn't kidding the library was impressive. Done in a warm color scheme of burgundy and gold, it didn't come off as imposing, either. It was a place most people would be very comfortable plopping down on a couch and spending a rainy afternoon curled up with a good book. This community must take the idea that a synagogue should also be a _beit midrash_, a house of study, very seriously. You could just tell by the attention and care given to make the atmosphere of the place warm and inviting.

The Rabbi shot Charlie a proud smile, and replied, "Thank you." He turned to me, "Agent Eppes, if you both wouldn't mind waiting here while I go fetch Ms. Katz."

I nodded, and with that Charlie and I were left to explore the library a little on our own. Taking full advantage, I drifted over to a large wood carving that was hanging on the far wall.

I'd never be able to explain how, but I suddenly felt Ms. Katz enter the room. It was like a warm spring breeze drifting through the air after a long cold winter. The presence had a hot spark of life to it, like the rush of the wind, or ancient beat of the Earth under your feet. It was like nothing I had ever felt from someone before.

I turned and our eyes locked.

Then I was drowning in dark obsidian depths. Some thing slammed in to me like a hot scalding wave. It was like falling forward without actually falling. It was a movie flashing through my head, like the rare times I suddenly just got a flash during a case.

I saw men in Nazi uniforms going door to door rounding people up. Being loaded like cattle in to a train car. Having the feeling of a stranger's breath on the back of my neck because the car was packed so tightly I couldn't breathe, much less move. The sickening smell of fear, dust, sickness and death that drifted over me like a curtain as I clutched my ten year old sister tighter to me. Standing naked before a pit and feeling the cold bite of a gun muzzle against my temple. Coming to awareness with cold, dead, clammy flesh touching every inch of me, the taste of my own blood on my lips, and the comprehension I had been buried alive without even enough air to scream.

Suddenly there was a cool breeze beating back that heat. It wasn't showy. It was quiet. Cool. Steady. Private. Mine. It pushed back at the heat, with a silent snarl of 'Get out'. Then abruptly, some invisible hand threw a light switch, the connection was broken. My knees felt like rubber. I staggered up against the wall like someone had cut my strings.

Ms. Katz studied me with a very interested look.

What had just happened here?

Because whatever it was, it should have been impossible.

I suddenly had the urge to make the ancient sign against the Evil Eye. My grandmother Eppes would have been so proud of me. My father on the other hand would probably kick my butt. He considered things like the Sight and the Evil Eye superstitious Old World nonsense.

Charlie's hands were suddenly there, with a steadying grip on me. He seemed to be doing a lot of that tonight. He then quietly said in my ear, "I warned you, that you weren't up to this."

I blinked at him.

Charlie didn't feel that? Didn't feel anything?

Crap.

That's it.

No more Imitrex.

The stuff was punching bigger holes in my brain than any migraine ever would.

The old woman standing before us could have passed for any nice old Granny. She reminded me of my Grandmother Eppes. She had intense, soulful, dark eyes that dominated her face. Her thin pale face was lined with lots of smile and laugh lines. Her snow, white hair was done in a bun at the back of her neck. She looked harmless, and ordinary. The only thing out of place from the wholesome grandma image was the star-like scar on the side of her forehead. I wondered if she still had the Nazi bullet in her head.

Okay...

I'm buying in to my own drug induced hallucinations.

Yes, for my next act tonight, I'll be dancing naked with my happy friend the pretty pink elephant and singing a duet with King Moon Racer on the Island of Misfit Toys.

I pushed myself away from Charlie and the wall.

She acknowledged Charlie with a nod of her head and a "Dr. Eppes". Then Ms. Katz smiled at me and there was genuine approval shining in her eyes. As if she read Charlie and me like books, and enjoyed the story. "Rabbi Miller asked me to pass on his regrets. He will not be able to join us. A parent is running late and he didn't want to leave the child waiting alone."

I liked the Rabbi more and more.

He had his priorities straight. Kids always come first.

Ms. Katz expression became very guarded. "I understand you come to us asking for charity, Agent Eppes?" You couldn't miss the disdainful edge she had added to the word 'charity'.

Why did I get the impression this was some sort of test?

Suddenly a spark of a memory long forgotten childhood memory drifted through my mind. An old Jewish story my father told me once about a rich man and a pauper. The story goes, one day a pauper came to the rich man and was told he would receive nothing because the rich man "had a bad year". The pauper's classic response was only, "I don't understand, My Friend. If you had a bad year why should I suffer?" Jewish beggars don't ask, they demand as if collecting a debt. It is not a gift you give, my father gone on to tell me, but a fulfillment of your responsibility to your fellow man. The world gives to you and so you must give to others.

I squared my stance. I was gambling here. I knew it. "I come here to ask for nothing, Elder. I come here demanding."

Ms. Katz's smile got wider, "And why is that, Young One?"

I looked her in the eye, "There is no such thing as charity. There is only _Tzedakah, _justice. I come here to you demanding justice."

She nodded, "Because what we provide to others is never a gift but merely righteousness or justice, a fulfillment of an obligation. _Tikun Olam_."

"Fix the world." I translated loosely.

"The charge given to us is to do what we can, where we can. Our kingdom is of this world." Ms. Katz gestured for Charlie and me to take a seat. "Your knowledge is a credit to your father, Agent Eppes."

What?

I blinked in shock, "Why would you say father, Ms Katz?"

She merely smiled at me.

Jewish tradition bases religious identity on matrilineal lines. By the old ways you are what your mother is. It was the reason why my Grandmother Eppes had not been pleased with my father for marrying my Christian mother and outside the Jewish faith. Why didn't Ms. Katz presume mother? I'd guessed that this was a Reform synagogue and they fairly recently had adopted patrilineal descent as well.

But still...

My shock must have shown, because Ms. Katz gave me an amused look, "Please have a seat."

Charlie muttered a, "Thank-you, Ms. Katz. We will."

Then he yanked my still gawking form down to the couch with him.

Oh yeah, I'm making a wonderful impression tonight.

Ms. Katz then walked over to one of the bookcases and pulled a book off the shelf. Turning to face us, she hugged it to herself in a protective gesture. "Is it true what Agent Gales told us and this little girl wasn't even given a name?"

"Yes."

"_Never shall I forget the faces of the little children, whose bodies I saw turned in to wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky_," Ms. Katz whispered softly.

"Elie Wiesel," Charlie finished for her, "Night".

She nodded. "First they gave us the symbol to wear, Dr. Eppes. Then they replaced our names with cold exterminable numbers". Then she her eyes met mine, and there a silent determination in them, "Victims should always have names, Agent Eppes. This is the lesson the Long Night taught us. We must never be allowed to forget that."

What exactly do you say to words like that?

I didn't know.

Six million is so incomprehensible it's meaningless. It's like crime statistics, people just can't identity the numbers or the tolls of human misery behind them. Humans can't empathize with rows of zeros. It's not until you start digging in to and hearing the stories about family members and their hopes and dreams that vanished in to the fires of Auschwitz. It's not until you look in to a victim's eyes, do you truly understand. Only then do you truly realize the suffering nice neat round numbers can contain.

"We shall provide the monument for you, Agent Eppes." Ms. Katz said. Her eyes looked right through me as if she was seeing something far away in the distance. There was almost like a power floating on them, a hint of prophecy. The words floated across my skin like a static charge and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This time those burning eyes were turned on to Charlie. "But it is the duty of another to give you the name." She looked at both us this time, "Follow the child. For she shall lead you to what you seek."

I had no clue what those words meant.

I had a very bad feeling I didn't want to find out.

Charlie and I were silent for a long time. My brother was the one that eventually broke the quiet. Getting up he said, "Ms. Katz, if you'll pardon me, I'm going to go pull the truck around for my brother."

"Oh, Agent Eppes," Ms. Katz voice called to me softly when I got up to follow Charlie, "Always trust your gift. Your grandmother would be correct. There are ill tidings riding on the winds tonight. Be very careful and watch your back. Shalom."

I blinked.

I never once mentioned my Grandmother Eppes tonight.

Exactly what had happened here?

Funny thing was, I was pretty sure I didn't want to know that either.

Call it a hunch.


	13. Chapter 13

Authors Notes: A very special thanks to Lisa who gave me the information about the Sheddia, and yes, the heretic penguins are coming. And thanks to Dawn for playing Beta.

Disclaimers: I do not own Numb3rs, The Adams Family, or any other TV references. The mention of the "Crystal Cave" is used without permission and no profit is being made.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

I thanked Ms. Katz.

Then I booked it out of that library like my father was chasing me down with a Russian mail-order bride catalogue. Ms. Katz had rattled me badly. I haven't been this unnerved since the night my Grandmother Eppes had put the Sheddai around my neck, and with tears in her eyes, told me good-bye.

I didn't want to know what had happened back there in that library. I didn't even want to think about it. I liked my world black and white, good guys and bad guys, not those lovely shades of grey I kept getting kicked towards. I just wanted to happily ignore what had happened back there and go back to my sane, normal life.

All right...

Scratch 'sane' life.

All the male SAC's in the office are terrified of my second since Megan demonstrated her machine gun prowess by aiming low on all the male targets on the firing range. Colby and David don't consider it a case well done unless they have blown something up, causing property damage. Thanks to Crockett and Tubbs, the FBI's insurance carrier knows me by first name. The FBI, NSA, (and I'm pretty sure majority of the LAPD, LAFD, and Coast Guard) thinks my team of malcontents is nuttier than my Aunt Irene's Christmas Nut Roll.

Which they are.

I'm a co-dependent Wednesday Adams, who gets off being in charge of this dysfunctional troupe from Hell like a crack addict gets off on a crack fix. My girlfriend dumped me because she thinks I'm a psychopath. I almost get blown to smithereens monthly. I get shot at by the bad guys on a regular basis and stare down serial killers like clockwork.

My father is a grandchild obsessed, food-making stalker. My mother still haunts the family home and knocks pictures off the walls when she's annoyed with us. Charlie suffers the delusions that math-hood will explain this insanity. That's when he's not doing things like lying on beds of nails, or doing strange experiments in bath tubs. Our own version of Uncle Fester, after reenacting his own Archimedes "Eureka" moment, is currently floating up in orbit and probably still refusing to eat colored food.

Howdy Doody time.

Lets face it, Eppes.

You wouldn't know what to do with normal if it was handed to you gift wrapped with special care instructions.

You just have to love a post-migraine crash. You really do. Riding the mood swings out was like riding a roller-coaster right after eating, needing to puke, and not being able to get off the damned ride. Tilting your head and praying the splatter didn't hit too many innocent people around you was about all you could hope for.

I emerged from the building, and dots started dancing before my eyes. I barely managed to catch myself on outside wall of the building as the world started teetering. I lowered myself to the ground. I really did feel like crap. I needed to sit down for a few minutes. I took a couple of deep breaths and laid my head on my knees, so my world could steady around me.

Not eating anything besides a few saltines and a little ginger ale before going out tonight was not one of my brighter ideas.

"Don?"

Surprised, I snapped my head up in the direction of my brother's voice and the world swam again.

Sudden movements.

Not a good idea.

When the world stopped teeter-tottering, I realized it was Charlie looking down at me with a concerned expression.

"I'm fine."

I simply needed the freaking world to stop spinning.

"Sure you are."

When exactly did Charlie start sounding like my father?

Note to self: Stop the whole 'encouraging Charlie to spend time with Dad' thing.

Charlie sat down next to me. "Here." He placed a bottle of something in my hand. I shot him a questioning look. "It's Gatorade. Drink it. We're stuck here until some idiot moves his car."

I looked at the bottle and scowled. I hated the blue Gatorade.

"Drink it, Don. I promise you, if you pass out on me, I'm dragging you face down to the car."

"This blue crap is payback for the gothed up Barbie Dream Castle I gave you for Christmas when you were six, isn't it?"

My brother smirked, "Hell no. That's black-mail material. Think of the top dollar Megan would pay for information you actually did something sweet and sensitive once?"

I twisted open the bottle, "I don't know what Mom told you, but all that sappy stuff was her idea."

"Funny, Mom always said the very opposite."

Dad had been reading us both Mary Stewart's "The Crystal Cave". Charlie had loved the book so much that all he asked for Christmas that year was a castle. I had always been a little soft headed when it came to my brother, and that year I had proved it. I had spent a good chunk of my paper route money gothing up the Dream Castle with Mom's help. I even tracked down a set of colored dragons to go with it. The red fire-breathing one had been Dad. The blue, serene, one had been Mom and the golden one had been Charlie.

"She lied."

My brother shot me an I'm-not-buying-it look, "I still remember when I asked you where you were after I opened the dragons. You replied you were the little brother eating troll under the bridge. That's when mom pulled a black dragon from behind her back and announced, "He's right here".

"Like I told you, Mom's sentimental crap." I took a sip of the Gatorade. The stuff tasted as bad as I remembered. "If it had been my idea, the evil troll would have been roasting the cute golden dragon over an open fire."

Rolling his eyes my brother replied, "Dragons are fire proof."

"Only the red one, he's a fire dragon. The gold one's an Earth Dragon, therefore not fire proof. He can be roasted and eaten by the troll. Mmm…Tastes like chicken."

"Why do I get in to these arguments with you?" my brother said, exasperated, "Especially since I never win with what you pass off as logic? All dragons breathe fire and consequently are fire proof. The black dragon was the only dragon with wings, however. Mom always said it was because the black one was different from the others, a fierce sentry dragon. He needed the wings to be able to fly off to protect the innocent and fight evil. She always said he would fly away because that was his nature but he'd find his way home when he was needed most."

Yup, sounded like Mom.

She had always been a sappy romantic at heart.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the guy stepping out of the shadows by the Chanukah tree. He was built like an NFL linebacker and wearing a shabby looking Santa suit. He looked like a Santa's evil, reject, hit man cousin from the _Sopranos_.

Nah, this guy didn't stick out at a Jewish Synagogue at ALL.

Santa's eyes met mine. His eyes were flat; dead. Not good. Only two types of people get eyes like that; cops after they had seen way too much on the job, or serious hard-core bad guys. I knew immediately which category this guy fell in to.

I'm sure someone who lived in that shiny, happy world where bad things never happened would probably tell me I'm being paranoid. That the bulge under his suit could be anything, and not just the gun that my mistrustful mind was conjuring. The thing is, I didn't live in that naïve world. I haven't for a long time. I doubt I could find that happy place with the help of a GPS unit. I'd seen too much horrifying crap happen to good people.

"We're going inside," I announced in a tone that left no room for argument. I surprised Charlie by leaping to my feet.

Isn't adrenaline amazing stuff?

"Don, what the...?" Charlie exclaimed as he followed me up and barely managed to catch me from falling forward as the world spun suddenly and my knees buckled.

"You're not going anywhere," a voice said suddenly from the alleyway between two buildings. He stepped out into the open. Santa's holly jolly sidekick had a 22 automatic pointed straight at us. Though he wasn't as big as Santa over there, this guy was still tall and probably out weighed me by roughly thirty pounds of muscle. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I watched Santa reach under his costume and pull a deadly looking Beretta, following his partner's lead.

So much for me being paranoid.

Ms. Katz could have clued me in when she warned me to "Watch my back," that she meant literally outside the freaking building.

Santa nonchalantly walked up to us, keeping his gun fixed on us the whole time. He shot me a curious glance, "You know, for a Fed with a street rep as nasty as yours, Eppes, I was kind of expecting something larger."

"Funny?" I drifted my eyes downward so he'd have no doubt what I was implying, "I'm sure your girlfriend was too." I'd hate for them to think my reputation as a snarky, hard-assed Fed wasn't well earned.

"Don," my brother hissed through clenched teeth as he slowly put his hands up. "Do you really think it's a wise idea to antagonize the large Santa with the gun?"

"The dancing elves told me to do it."

"Don."

Hey, if running my mouth kept the creep's deadly 9mm pointed at me and not my baby brother?

Yeah.

But I wasn't going to tell Charlie that.

It would lead to a fight.

Charlie would go on about me not being able to get over my protective big brother role, having a martyr complex, Blah-blah, Yada-yada, and all that pseudo pop psychology crap. I ignore him. It starts a fight. The Eppes brother usual.

Turing my attention to Santa, I asked, "What do you want?"

"For you and your brother to take a little ride with us," Santa replied, "Our boss wants to have a little talk about a flash drive."

Oh yeah, I am so feeling that warm It's-A-Wonderful-Life holiday glow.

Sing it with me folks...

I saw Donnie getting shot by Santa Claus.


End file.
